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THE COMING CLIMAX 



IN 



THE DESTINIES OF AMERICA 



Shall it Come in Peace 

or Must it Come in Warf 



■V** OF CONcS* 




DEC 28 1891 J 



By Lester C.°^Hubbard 

it 



CHICAGO 

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 

1891 






Copyright 189 1 
By Charles H. Kerr 



Editors of reform newspapers are at liberty to make extracts from chi& 
book, properly credited, at their discretion. 



In 



CONTENTS 



Dedication 

Publishers Preface 

Prelude— "Dawn" .... 

I. The Lesson of the Great Rebellion 

II. The Peril of a Slothful Optimism 
Where do we Stand To-day? 
The Mutterings of the Storm 

The Mustering of the Squadrons 
Nearing the Danger-Line . 
Premonitory Rumblings 



III. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. The Inertia of the Middle Class 

IX. Nation- Builders and Nation-Savers 

X. The American Producer Stands at Bay 

XI. The Air is Heavy with a Great Fear 

XII. Guides that Mislead the People 
Symptoms of Organic Disease 
The Gangrene of Dissolution . 

The Dread Dynamics of Hate 
The Impending Crash 
In Order of Battle 



XIII. 

XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. The Gage of War . 

XIX. The Dread Climax 

XX. The Task that Implores Us 
Postlude— "When the Towers Fall" 



PAGE 

5 

. 7 

9 

. ii 

27 

• 5* 
74 

• 94 
109 
121 

137 
149 
164 

183 
203 
220 
244 
267 
296 
325 
344 
368 
441 
479 



TO THE ALL-POWERFUL MlDDLE CLASS OF AMERI- 
CA, WHO BY WISE AND RIGHTEOUS ACTION CAN 
SAVE THE REPUBLIC FROM EVERY DANGER THAT 
NOW THREATENS, THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED. 



PUBLISHER'S PREFACE 

Realizing the gravity of the subjects with 
which the present treatise deals, I think a word 
is due to the reader, not as to the author's logic, 
for of this every critic must judge for himself, 
but as to his knowledge of the facts with which 
he deals. 

Lester C. Hubbard was born on the Western 
Reserve in Ohio, of a family that settled in New 
England in the seventeenth century. He was a 
private soldier and afterwards a captain in the 
civil war. After the war he studied law, but soon 
took up newspaper work and has had long prac- 
tical experience on newspapers in leading cities, 
East and West. 

His attention was first called definitely to the 
labor problem at Boston, during the telegraphers' 
strike of 1883. Since that time, he has been 
earnestly devoted to the labor movement of the 
country at large, and has had an exceptional op- 
portunity to keep informed of its growth and its 
spirit, by reason of an extensive correspondence, 
amounting to thousands of letters per year, with 

7 



8 PUBLISHER'S PREFACE 

its leaders and writers in all sections, and with 
workers in all departments of toil. If there be 
in the United States any specialist and expert 
who can speak with authority regarding the extent, 
the purposes and the temper of the various asso- 
ciations of workers in city and country, Lester C. 
Hubbard is the man. 

As the last pages of "The Coming Climax" go 
to press, a noteworthy incident occurs. A 
prominent ex-member of Congress and high 
official of the World's Fair, says at an aristocratic 
banquet in Chicago, as reported by the "Times," 
that he returned from a recent European tour 
with "the opinion that after all a monarchy was 
a pretty good sort of government, and that, with 
the exception of the United States, republican 
forms of government were hollow shams." This 
speech is mainly noteworthy from the fact that it 
has not attracted newspaper comment. The dis- 
loyalty of our governing class to democracy is 
becoming a commonplace. Is not the time ripe 
for a word that shall open the people's eyes? 

Charles H. Kerr. 

Chicago, November, 1891. 



"DAWN" 

It comes, it looms up in the darkness; 

Something, I hardly know 
Of a word or a name to name it; 

Yet I feel it must be so; 
That a time of choice is coming 

For weal or for woe. 

The pulses of a nation 

Beating in fever and pain; 
The fever of woe and want, 

The fever of greed and gain, 
And the stars are wailing in heaven, 

And the great sea moans for its slain. 

In the stillness of my life 

I can hear the tramp afar 
Of the armies marching 

Under the morning star, 
To the Armageddon battle, 

Where the eagles are. 

The days lie dark before me; 

I know not what shall be; 
But at midnight or at day-dawn 



10 DAWN 

When the call comes unto me, 
I am ready to rise and follow 
To the death-agony. 

O my people, my brothers! 

God grant me to be true, 
Ever true to his highest truth. 

No great thing can I do, 
But firm as a faithful heart may love, 

Ever I stand by you. 

Yours, and I see God's angel 

Coming along the sky, 
With the garments rolled in blood, 

And the steadfast eye, 
And some say her name is Love, 

And some, Liberty. 

She comes — who will know her coming, 
And be ready her step to greet, 

When she comes with the blood on her brow 
And the dust about her feet? 

Who will boldly drink of the bitter 
Without a hope of the sweet? 

Let us be true, heart-loyal, 

Ready what time she calls. 
Justice and Truth have met 

To cast down the age-built walls. 
Happy shall be the victor that day, 

And blessed he that falls. 

Alice Werner. 



THE COMING CLIMAX 

CHAPTER I 

THE LESSON OF THE GREAT REBELLION 

"Our present civilization is characterized and tainted by a devouring 
greediness for wealth — the passion for gain is everywhere sapping pure 
and generous feeling and raising up bitter foes against any reform which 
may threaten to turn aside the stream of wealth; I sometimes feel as if a 
great reform were necessary to break up our present mercenary civili- 
zation in order that Christianity — now repelled by the universal worldli- 
ness — may come into near contact with the soul, and reconstruct society 
after its own pure and disinterested principles." — William Ellery Chan- 
ging. 

The presage of storm and portents of evil 
which prophetically announced the great war of 
the rebellion were faint and few when compared 
with the omens of approaching convulsion which 
now challenge the attention of all thinking peo- 
ple whose logical faculties are not hopelessly 
drugged by selfish personal interests. 

God has struck the hour for a New Dispensa- 
tion for man. It will come in and nothing can 
stop it. Shall it come in peaceably by reason 
of our willing co-operation, or must it come in 
forcibly by the omnipotent will of the Almighty 
crushing down at one and the same time our 
11 



12 THE COMING CLIMAX 

upstart wills, our vain opposition and our rebell- 
ious bodies? 

When Channing spoke the words quoted 
at the head of this chapter, there were 
only two millionaires in America, Stephen 
Girard and John Jacob Astor. There are now 
over three thousand; and we have single individ- 
uals who count their wealth by the hundred mill- 
ion. Then the rule of great corporations was 
unknown, while they now occupy and devastate 
our whole land. The evil and peril then exist- 
ent have increased an hundred fold. 

Our great, patient toiling masses, so long de- 
nied a living voice in their own government, so 
long oppressed by cultured and crafty power, so 
long robbed of the fruits of their toil through 
bastard legal forms, have at last arisen, and now 
say to one another: 

"What shall we do to save ourselves and our 
children? How again enjoy the reign of justice? 
How get back Washington's republic that has 
been ravished from us? How secure for coming 
generations the blessing of a government that is 
truly of the people, by the people and for the 
people? How can we best obey God's intima- 
tion that after ages of bloodshed, persecution 



THE COMING CLIMAX 13 

and tyranny the time has at last come when one 
country shall stand among the nations of earth 
preaching, believing and living the Fatherhood 
of God and the Brotherhood of man?" 

We know what of sympathy the Triumphant 
Plutocrats will give to these divinely born aspi- 
rations that are now thrilling in the hearts of 
millions of our great plain people. They will 
scoff them, deny them, give ferocious battle 
against them. They will do as did Pharaoh of 
old — as did our own slaveholders, when God 
said, "Let my people go free!" 

What answer will our great, contented, well- 
to-do and all-potential middle class of America 
make to this high plea for better things for man? 
Will they sit silent and unresponsive while tak- 
ing their ease ? If so, woe be unto them and 
the land in which they live. For a dark night 
shall come, and a mighty storm shall beat them 
down into the earth, and the punishment that 
of old was visited upon disobedient men shall be 
visited upon them, and they shall cry out in 
their agony, "Truly, God is above all, and doth 
rule in this — His universe." 

Only the other day and a great war occupied 



14 THE COMING CLIMAX 

all our broad American land. During four 
tragic years thirty million citizens of a great re- 
public, with a common language, a common lin- 
eage and a common destiny, made fighting each 
other their principal business. All the produc- 
tive energies of the people, all their accumulated 
resources, and all the strength and courage of 
all the able-bodied men in the nation, were con- 
centrated in opposing lines, and then hurled 
against each other for purposes of mutual 
destruction. 

Terrible was the slaughter of men, but far 
more awful the moral devastation that followed 
the shock of battle. Tender fathers, affection- 
ate husbands, aspiring youths torn to pieces by 
shot and shell, burned by fevers, worn down by 
hardships, wasted away by wounds, withered up 
by disease. These good citizens, these nation 
builders, these wealth creators, the most price- 
less treasure of a well ordered state, were slain 
by reason of ostrich-head-hiding foolishness on 
the part of the republic; murdered because an 
unthinking and utterly selfish animalism was 
regnant in the land; perishing for the sinful 
ignorance of the people who could know the 
right and do it, but would not. All these went 



THE COMING CLIMAX 15 

down to death by the hundred thousand and 
were piled into dank trenches like cord-wood. 
Oh, it was hideous beyond belief. 

And yet the present dominant crowd of patri- 
otic orators, philosophic essayists and authori- 
tative pulpiteers declare to a man, that the "war 
between the states" was a historic necessity, an 
unavoidable event in the life of the nation, and 
its supreme pain merely the necessary friction 
incidental to a great turn in the evolutionary 
wheel. Nay more, the clerical contingent with 
sacrilegious audacity saddle the final responsi- 
bility for it on the Almighty, and affirm that it 
was a fore-ordained part of God's plan for the 
government of men. As well might they lay it 
on Providence when a family pushing love and 
charity out of doors fall to murdering one 
another under the devilish inspiration of hate 
and greed. For the nation is only a larger 
family. 

The optimistic complacency of our accredited 
exponents of public opinion, when brought front 
to front with the monumental crime and shame 
of that bloody war, is but an expression of the 
aggregated egotism of our whole people. Where 
a national sin is concerned we are in the posi- 



16 THE COMING CLIMAX 

tion of the autocrat of all the Russias. There 
is no visible authority that has the power to 
punish, and no earthly court to give an impar- 
tial trial of the issue. Our pride, vanity and 
self-sufficiency furnish the only advocates in 
the case, and these plead solely in exculpation 
and justification. While the national conscience 
has slept, we have suffered an inversion of our 
moral perceptions, and see glory and congratu- 
lation in a fratricidal war, where of right there 
should be only infamy and regret. We build 
battle monuments to commemorate the victories 
of brothers over brothers on blood-stained 
ground where only temples of sorrow would be 
meet and fitting. North and South alike erect 
statues and exult in the prowess of military 
chiefs who demonstrated high expertness in kill- 
ing men of their own kin. 

The North declares that its triumph estab- 
lished the fact of the indissoluble union of the 
states. The South, vanquished, but content 
with present prosperity and full political rights 
in the nation, pleasantly denies that the propo- 
sition affirmed by the late Confederate States of 
America can be so determined. Rivers of 
human blood poured forth. Billions of property 



THE COMING CLIMAX 17 

expended, stolen and destroyed. The spiritual 
sensibilities of our whole people put in eclipse. 
The moral progress of the Nation halted. A 
monstrous debt saddled on to the back of 
patient industry. A dragon 's-teeth crop of 
hitherto unknown evils springing out of the 
blood-soaked ground full grown and armed to 
the heel for ravaging spoliation. Oppressive 
trusts, autocratic monopolies, combinations of 
capitalistic knaves who make the people their 
prey, an era of political corruption that amazes 
the virtuous; legislative bribery rampant, and a 
a prostituted judiciary, that makes all righteous 
laws obsolete when the defendant has plenty of 
gold and is willing to spend it. Illegal fran- 
chises and brigand charters sold for a price. 
The practical passing away of democratic gov- 
ernment in Washington's republic, co-incident 
with the rise of a Triumphant Plutocracy that 
imperialistically dominates the government of 
the Nation. The glamour of ill-gotten wealth 
dazzling the eyes of the people, causing them to 
doubt their old-time reverence for simple hon- 
esty. The spread of an atheistic gangrene 
through all the body politic, which makes the 



18 THE COMING CLIMAX 

getting of dollars, no matter how, the chief end 
of man. 

All this varied crop direct from the Kingdom 
of Hades as the logical product of that unnatural 
war, and yet no undying principle of right set- 
tled by it. It could not be so accomplished, 
because physical force cannot invade the domain 
of the spiritual, which is the birthplace and 
home of moral principle. 

Sophistical mouthers may challenge us with the 
"freedom of the slave." The enfranchisement 
of the negro was an accident of war, an unpre- 
meditated result, and northern claim to it, as the 
primary philanthropic motive of the war, is des- 
titute of all validity. The war of the rebellion 
merely decided that when a nation with slaves 
fights one without any, the human chattels are 
liable to be lost as spoil of battle. 

More than fifty years ago God gave clear 
intimation to the people of this professedly 
Christian country, that it was time they set about 
abolishing the eternal crime of holding their 
brother men in bondage. His command was 
unheeded. So he did the task in his own way 
and meted out just punishment for our national 



THE COMING CLIMAX 19 

disobedience along with it. The guilt of the 
North and South was precisely one and the 
same, yet the South was smitten with a heavier 
hand. But are the books balanced and has the 
North told down all its penal debt in agony and 
shame? No man dare say so; the end may not 
yet be, for though God does not settle his 
accounts every month or every year, he inexo- 
rably squares them at the long last. 

Slavery had become a national offense in 
God's eyes, and was His cause of the war of the 
rebellion. The cause of that war, as recognized 
by the average American citizen of the time, was 
the firing on Fort Sumter, which was a South- 
ern hint that the United States government had 
split in two. And forthwith slaveholding Doug- 
las democrats took down their guns and marched 
forth to maintain the integrity of the Federal 
Union. This iron-clad fact effectually disposes 
of the sentimental northern after-thought that 
the war was prosecuted by the northern states 
to purge this alleged land of the free of the cry- 
ing shame of human slavery. If further evi- 
dence of a confirmatory character is needed to 
prove our proposition, it can be found in the 
record of fugitive slaves returned to their mas- 



20 THE COMING CLIMAX 

ters in the first year of the war, by the liberat- 
ing army of United States soldiers to whom the 
black men had confidingly flown for freedom and 
protection. 

In this year of grace 1891, we are wiser on 
some matters than we were in 1861, and are 
now pretty well convinced that the war came 
on because God struck the hour for the extirpa- 
tion of slavery in our American republic. 

Could the institution of slavery have been put 
away in peace? To deny that proposition is to 
negative the declaration of God in Holy writ, 
for He saith, "My ways are ways of pleasantness 
and all my paths are paths of peace." All 
human experience proves that the only true hap- 
piness comes by obedience to the moral law. 
The upward road to virtue is hard and steep 
both to individual men and nations, but fair 
flowers of compensation bloom all along the way. 
The sacrifices exacted belong not to the physi- 
cal world, but to the spiritual, and are of self- 
denial, patience, charity, and loving service 
for others. By the exercise of those heavenly 
benevolences, the people of the United States 
could have cast off the national sin of slavery 



THE COMING CLIMAX 21 

without the shedding of one drop of human 
blood. 

Were these supernal agencies invoked when 
God's clear intimation of high duty to be done 
came to our republic? 

They were not. 

The Almighty said through his chosen proph- 
ets: "It is full time that this American nation 
which gives me worship, and reverences Jesus 
Christ the Divine Illuminator, should put away 
from it the ages-old crime of human slavery. 
That sin belongs to days when men's minds 
were darkened, and their consciences ignorant. 
You live in the new light and can see the wrong; 
harbor it among you no longer." 

Then obedient children of the Almighty 
Father would have replied: "This duty which 
thou givest unto us will we do, and at once." 
From all the land good and wise men would 
have come together, and said to one another: 

"This hath been the sin of all of us, North and 
South alike; become we now brotherly toilers in 
the common task of putting it away. Let us 
tax ourselves equitably from year to year until 
the just price has been paid for every slave. 
We will affectionately instruct these our swarthy 



22 THE COMING CLIMAX 

brothers, because they are to be one with us in 
God's eternal kingdom; we will think provi- 
dently and wisely for them, until they shall have 
become useful, enlightened and equal citizens of 
our great republic, and then the task given us 
by the Father will be well and truly done." 

But our people did not heed the Divine com- 
mand, for they reviled God and murdered His 
prophets. The Abolitionists, who spoke the 
warning of the Almighty to the people of this 
nation, were scorned, spit upon, mobbed, shot 
and hung. The planters of the South found 
slavery profitable, and clung to it. The influ- 
ential and wealthy commercial and manufactur- 
ing classes of the North upheld it because there 
was money for them in the southern markets. 
The pro-slavery southern vote held the balance 
of power in the nation, and United States offi- 
cials hunted fugitive slaves until they vanished 
across the Canadian border. A mob of Yankee 
aristocrats dragged William Lloyd Garrison 
through the streets of Boston with a rope around 
his neck. The Attorney General of Massa- 
chusetts presided at a meeting in Faneuil Hall 
that approved the murder of Elijah Lovejoy 
because he attacked human slavery. United 



THE COMING CLIMAX 23 

States Marshall Isaiah Rhynders, at the head of 
a band of ruffians, broke up an Anti-Slavery con- 
vention in New York City. Thirty-five years 
ago any orator, man or woman, who assailed the 
institution of slavery in any northern city did so 
at the hazard of life. 

And where were the clergy at that time ? Just 
where they are to-day, on the side of power and 
gold. That great woman, Miss Martineau, 
writing more than fifty years ago, said of our 
country: 

"Not even the slave-holding and commercial 
classes, are so guilty of the crime of slavery as 
the clerical class; their opposition to its aboli- 
tion is well nigh universal, and they use all their 
authority as religious teachers in favor of slav- 
ery, and yet when its abolition is finally accom- 
plished, they will claim the glory of a reform 
which they did their uttermost to retard." 

After a half a century we know full well both 
the truth of her general statement and its pre- 
diction. 

The Republican party was born through sec- 
tional selfishness, and the abstract right or 
wrong of the slavery system from a moral point 



24 THE COMING CLIMAX 

of view, was a minor consideration. The North 
found out by practical experiment that slavery 
was a politico-economic fallacy, in the case of 
energetic and progressive communities in a tem- 
perate climate. Seward announced the irre- 
pressible conflict between industrial systems that 
were built respectively on free and slave labor. 
There was money in it for the northern states to 
have all territories come into the Union as free 
states, for it meant a larger population, more 
general wealth, and a greater number of buyers. 

Here was something tangible to build a polit- 
ical party on. It appealed to the interests of 
millions of people who were greedy after cash. 

The inevitable shock of battle between the 
opposing northern and southern states came. 
The republican party went into power through 
a plurality vote. The South seceded. The 
National instinct recognized that enduring pros- 
perity was impossible, unless all the states 
formed one government. President Lincoln 
declared his indifference whether he saved the 
Union with or without slavery, but it must be 
saved. After nearly two years of unsuccessful 
conflict, the slaves were freed as a war measure. 
The Union was preserved; that was man's part 



THE COMING CLIMAX 25 

of it. Slavery was abolished; that was God's 
part of it. 

Did the terrible punishment we received for 
National disobedience teach us National wis- 
dom? 

Do we know with more of certainty that God 
rules and reigns in His universe? 

Have we learned through much suffering that 
Nations as well as men are under the dominion 
of an omnipotent moral law, which inexorably 
punishes all transgressions? 

Has a clearer light come to us by which we 
see that it is a man's mission here below to 
build and progress from better unto best, and 
take into his soul and life more of that justice 
and charity which is to be a part of his divine 
estate, hereafter? 

And lastly, have we found out that selfish 
omissions to do plain duties are punished, the 
same as active sins, under God's government? 

The time is nigh at hand when the people of 
this Nation shall receive Divine intimation of 
new tasks to be done for the well-being of all 
men; and as by our acts we must make answer, 
thus will be shown the degree of moral pro- 
gress we made under the schoolmastership 



26 THE COMING CLIMAX 

of God, during the war of the rebellion. 
"Be swift our souls to answer him, be jubilant 
our feet," lest we again pass under his terrible 
rod. 



CHAPTER II 

THE PERIL OF A SLOTHFUL OPTIMISM 

They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity. The 
heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, 
and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the 
Lord, and say: Is not the Lord among us? none evil can come upon us. — 
Micah III: 10, n. 

A whimsical fable, that is charged up to ante- 
diluvian times, shrewdly illustrates the persistent 
unbelief of our average humanity as to disagree- 
able events to come, no matter how distinctly 
they may be foretold by the inexorable logic of 
existing facts. The Old Testament gives circum- 
stantial narration of the scorning, scoffing and 
gibing which Noah's neighbors heaped upon him, 
while that devout man, in obedience to the 
divine command, kept at it, patiently weather- 
boarding his ark. The legend in question 
carries the story on a bit farther, and tells us that 
after the rain had been pouring down unceas- 
ingly for ten days and nights, and Noah's deriders 
were floundering around with the water clear 
27 



28 THE COMING CLIMAX 

up to their necks, they still stubbornly main- 
tained that "it wouldn't be much of a shower 
after all." 

We have not passed beyond the shadow 
of the monumental catastrophe of our civil 
war, and are still struggling with its near- 
by effects. The burdens which it put upon us 
yet bear wearily down, and new consequences 
of that terrible conflict continually crop up in 
our national life. 

Centuries must pass before the philosophic 
historian can make an authoritative summary of 
the results of that tremendous clash of arms 
which shall be full and final. Nevertheless the 
remote and proximate causes of that great war 
stand sharply defined to our eyes, whereas with 
posterity they must ever become more dim and 
unsubstantial as the years circle away. 

The slow but sure approach of that time of ti- 
tanic battling was heralded by paroxysmal out- 
breaks of sectional antagonism which found ex- 
pression both in congressional halls and among 
the people at large. They came at irregular inter- 
vals during the two-score years preceding 1861, 
and, always increasing in breadth and intensity, 
unerringly indicated the ever-nearer oncoming of 



THE COMING CLIMAX 29 

the inevitable shock of war. These precursory 
broils, which logically led up to the ultimate 
tragedy, are live and familiar in our minds, for 
we still have gray-haired men amongst us 
who actively participated in most of them. 
Hence, let us con them over well, and then 
make comparison with certain sinister events 
that have taken place during the last twenty 
years. Let us mark if there be signs of kinship 
between them: note if they are the same in 
essence, and particularly observe if their general 
tendency lies parallel with the line of march 
that ended in a Niagara plunge into night and 
chaos some three decades ago. 

Our country, though torn, bleeding and 
wounded nigh unto death, finally managed to 
scramble out of the black gulf. Surely with 
that time of horror still so near, we will not 
walk as the fool walketh, and heedless of past 
suffering take again the way of danger. Nations, 
like individuals, can learn wisdom through 
miserable experiences; and this generation of 
living men may turn the ignorance, blunders 
and crimes of dead ancestral generations into 
sublime stepping stones up which they shall 
lift their country into a loftier plane of being, 



30 THE COMING CLIMAX 

where all the sweet prosperities in safety do 
abide, under the nurturing care of liberty, peace 
and justice. 

Turn then, oh my countrymen, to the past; 
read its stern lesson with your immortal souls; 
heed its minutest teaching, and when, in your 
journey of exploration along a highway which 
shows the trackings of tumultuous multitudes in 
the olden time, you come to where the road 
drops off into an abyss ragged and torn as by 
internal convulsion — beware, and turn back on 
your course, seeking better paths. The rent 
garments and whitened bones you see far down 
below, hold warning for you, and tell that other 
men have tried that way and found their death. 

The average American works in the present, 
for the purpose of living in the future. His 
father is a cherished memory, but his grand- 
father soon lapses into a shadowy personage, 
while his great-grandfather becomes a vague 
myth; he knows not what this ancestor wrought 
at, where he lived, where he died, and is igno- 
rant of his full name. 

The American gives his country's past much 
the same consideration — that is, he indifferently 



THE COMING CLIMAX 31 

turns his back on it, and goes about the business 
of to-day. Ask him who were cabinet officers 
twenty years ago — who our foreign ministers — 
who members of the Supreme Court — who 
speakers of the House — what the important laws 
passed in two sessions of Congress. Ask him 
to name the foremost national events between 
i 871 and '75, and you will find that this alert, 
intelligent man, who is informed right up to the 
front of the present hour, has a memory like a 
school-boy's slate where yesterday's sums are 
rubbed off to give place to those of to-day. 

This national peculiarity is a national weak- 
ness and fraught with peril, and a national 
instinct of self-preservation will compel its 
prompt reformation, if we are to save ourselves 
from a national disaster so overwhelming and all- 
prostrating that the war of the Rebellion will be 
dwarfed to a minor inconvenience of temporary 
character when placed beside it. We must go 
back to the past of our country and strive to 
gain therefrom whatsoever of instruction and 
guidance it may hold for a near future that is 
beset with many dangers. The departing mari- 
ner oft directs his course into the great sea by a 
well-known headland he leaves behind him. 



32 THE COMING CLIMAX 

In 1817 the territory of Missouri applied for 
admission as a State, and there came about the 
first friction between the sectional interests of 
the North and South. The morality of the 
institution of slavery did not enter into the 
issue, for both sides agreed that its righteous- 
ness was established by the Bible, and its legal- 
ity by the constitution of the United States. 
Both sides also recognized that free and slave 
labor could not harmoniously co-exist in the 
same community on a footing of equal prosper- 
ity, for long experiment had irrefragably proved 
that as one system flourished the other inevita- 
bly decayed. 

The North and South were like rival farmers 
who both coveted the same piece of ground, 
and as their powers in the government were 
evenly balanced, they settled the argument by 
the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which pro- 
vided that the South should have for slavery all 
the western territory below 36 degrees and 30 
minutes of latitude, and the North retain for 
free labor all above that line. The irreconcil- 
able antagonism of the two systems of labor in 
the same country had not yet dawned upon the 
wisest statesman, so with much ponderous self- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 33 

congratulation, our egotistic law-makers of that 
far-away time fancied that by their paper com- 
promise they had secured eternal peace between 
the North and South, and blocked God's evolu- 
tionary plan for the moral progress of man. 

South Carolina's Nullification ebullition of 
1832 arose out of the tariff question, but indicated 
very clearly the attitude that would be taken by 
the hot and audacious South, when its supreme 
interest of human slavery was deemed to be 
threatened. 

The years rolled on, and along in the forties 
humble anti-slavery societies were organized 
through the North. In 1848 Martin Van Buren, 
"the Fox of Kinderhook," allied himself with the 
democratic abolitionists, ran on the "barn- 
burner" ticket, and defeated Lewis Cass, the reg- 
ular democratic nominee, by incidentally help- 
ing the whigs elect Taylor and Fillmore. 

Again the fires of sectional animosity blazed 
out, and the men of the North and South 
looked distrust at one another across Mason's 
and Dixon's line. The statesmen of the South 
were swift to note this new menace against their 
"peculiar institution," and forthwith began an 
aggressive campaign for defense. In 1850 they 

3 



34 THE COMING CLIMAX 

haughtily demanded a fugitive-slave law, whose 
arbitrary provisions were taken as a personal 
outrage by millions of northern men. By this 
law all citizens were commanded to aid the 
slave-hunters in securing their prey, even to the 
extent of fighting in their defense. The taking 
of the negro back into slavery was a minor mat- 
ter; the major grievance of the free-born North- 
erners was the insult involved in their being 
compelled by law to do the task. Higher and 
still higher blazed the fire of wrath, when that 
infamous bill became a law. 

In 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe published 
Uncle Tom's Cabin, and millions knelt in spirit 
by the death-bed of poor old Uncle Tom, so 
foully murdered, and rose up eternal haters of 
Legree and the institution of human slavery 
whose legal atrocities he incarnated. Thus was 
the moral element introduced into the politico- 
economic war between the rival sections. 

In 1852, John P. Hale, free soil candidate 
for President, received 157,680 votes. 

In 1854 a pro-slavery Congress passed the 
Kansas and Nebraska bill, which abrogated the 
Missouri Compromise, and thus violated the 
definitive treaty by which the alien systems of 



THE COMING CLIMAX 35 

free and slave labor were kept at peace in the 
territories. 

This act was a pro-slavery invasion. The 
South took the initiative and flung down its 
gage of battle, and thus practically began a war 
which ended, eleven years later, in the conquest 
of the South and the overthrow of human slav- 
ery in the North American continent. 

Border ruffians from Missouri, armed with 
bowie-knife and revolver, swarmed the fertile 
Kansas plains, determined to naturalize the 
bondage of men on that virgin soil. These were 
met in stubborn conflict by free-state men from 
the North, to whom the Emigrant-aid society of 
New England contributed Sharpe's rifles and 
bibles, and especially the former, as occasion 
for their immediate use was the more manifest. 
At this time and place, a certain John Brown, of 
Ossawatomie, became noted among men for his 
primitive way of preaching and practicing 
Christianity. 

And the flames that declared the coming of a 
greater day of wrath, swept abroad throughout 
all the land, and men could see one another's 
white faces by the red glare that blazed down 
from the midnight sky, and there was a deep 



36 THE COMING CLIMAX 

foreboding roar, as of an approaching earth- 
quake. But the great majority of the people 
were defiant of the grim prophecies. These 
were the true heirs-at-law of Noah's scoffers, 
who sneeringly avowed that the predicted rain 
would not amount to even a sprinkle. 

But all this time God's eternal mill kept on 
grinding away at its grist. 

In 1856, John C. Fremont, the first republic 
an nominee for President, received 1,300,000 
votes. In the same year the Supreme Court of 
the United States told Dred Scott, a black man, 
who claimed to be a freeman wrongfully detained 
in slavery, that if he was a freeman he was not 
a citizen, and therefore could not bring action 
before that high Court to get back his stolen 
liberty. Ergo, he was a slave, and must a slave 
remain. 

That exalted tribunal in the same decision 
declared that the act of Congress embodied in 
the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which pro- 
hibited citizens from holding slaves in the terri- 
tories north of latitude 36 degrees and 30 min- 
utes, was unconstitutional and void. 

It will be well tor the great plain people of 



The coming climax 37 

America to remember this little circumstance, 
because our Triumphant Plutocracy of to-day 
expect to use the Supreme Court precisely after 
the manner of the Triumphant Slaveocracy of 
thirty-five years ago. Any popular legislation, 
which threatens the least of Plutocracy's unjust 
franchises, although it be squarely founded on 
God's justice and the natural rights of man, will 
be branded as unconstitutional and void, and 
millions of white Dred Scotts, seeking after 
liberty, will be told by the same high Court: 
"Lo, there is no law for you here. In bondage 
you must remain." 

On the 16th day of October, A. D. 1859, John 
Brown of Ossawatomie crossed from Maryland 
into Virginia at the head of twenty armed men. 
He made forcible invasion into a state of the 
American Union, which is treason. He went 
into the Old Dominion for the purpose of creat- 
ing an armed insurrection among the slaves, 
which was doubly treasonable. He forcibly 
seized the arms and property of the United 
States at Harper's Ferry and drove away the 
government's official custodians thereof, which 
is trebly and quadruply treasonable. He shot 



§8 THE COMING CLIMAX 

at United States soldiers and the Virginia 
militia, which was treason raised to the quin- 
tuple and sextuple power. 

He was captured, tried, condemned to death, 
and on the 2nd day of December, 1859, while 
walking to his doom, stooped and kissed a negro 
child, then mounted the scaffold and was hung. 

On that day all over the great North, church 
bells tolled, women wept and men greeted one 
another with solemn faces. On that day mill- 
ions mourned over an executed criminal guilty 
of treason on treason. Tell them that he broke 
the law of the land and trampled the constitu- 
tion under foot, and with treasonable compla- 
cency they reply, "Very true, but he was also 
a hero and a martyr, for he unselfishly wrought, 
and bravely died for human liberty." 

"Whether on the scaffold high 

Or in the battle's van 
The noblest death that man can die 
Is when he dies for man." 

All of this goes to prove that a traditional 
loyalty to one's country, and a perfunctory 
reverence for its constitution, are all very well, 
and perform their functions smoothly, under 
ordinary conditions; but hearts overfull with gen- 
erous rage, and souls aflame at sight of noble 



THE COMING CLIMAX 39 

deeds, quickly declare themselves emancipate 
from all orthodox formulas that would compel 
them, whether the same be political or religious. 
It would be well for all absolute governing pow- 
ers to remember this fact, for it applies with 
equal force to the rule of the Imperial Czar of 
all the Russias, and that of our own oligarchy 
of American Plutocrats. 

This treasonable sympathy with traitor John 
Brown demonstrated that the cold and unyield- 
ing mechanism of government belongs strictly 
to the physical world. It can dominate the 
perishing bodies of men, but their immortal 
spirits laugh at its chains as they soar upward 
toward the stars. 

John Brown was buried among the great 
north woods he loved so well, but ere two 
autumns had garlanded his grave with golden 
leaves, there came a classic revenge that shall 
forever glorify that once dishonored name. 
United States soldiers, destined to free the 
slaves for whom he laid down his life, stood on 
the very spot of his martyrdom, and sang "John 
Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave, but 
his soul goes marching on." They gave one 
unmistakable traitor glad apotheosis, even while 



40 THE COMING CLIMAX 

they were priming their guns to shoot down 
other traitors of a more recent date. 

A singular inconsistency this — and only recon- 
cilable to our reason by a belief that, in default 
of adequate wisdom on the part of men, a higher 
power directed the course of the war between 
the states, and while through it the Almighty 
punished our whole people for their deliberate 
ignorance and stubbornness in sin, he still 
worked on at his Divine plan for our country, 
and presidents, generals, and armies, were but 
puny puppets that moved to his will. 

The election of Abraham Lincoln was viewed 
at the North with doubt and vague fear, after 
the first enthusiasm of the victorious republicans 
had subsided. In the South, however, the con- 
trolling element welcomed the event with 
unbounded exultation, for it brought the long- 
looked-for chance, to erect the slave states into 
an aristocratic republic. The southern towns 
and cities never knew such an ambrosial winter as 
that of 1 860-6 1 . The people were fairly drunken 
with joys of anticipation. A triumph, actual 
and complete, could not have given a tithe of 
the rapture, which came to them as they gazed 



THE COMING CLIMAX 41 

at the alluring picture of the future, as drawn by 
their imaginations. 

The southern people are by temperament 
emotional and romantic. The men have mar- 
tial blood in their veins and their women give 
passionate admiration to chivalric bravery. 
The wealthy master caste of the South had 
abundant leisure, and used it in the cultivation 
of all the refined graces of social life. They 
poetized existence, and lifted it upon a senti- 
mental plane utterly unknown in the prosaic 
work-a-day North. Their state of society was 
a strange anachronism in the middle of the 19th 
century, and no civilized nation could show its 
counterpart. The ruling class were land-owners 
and slaveholders; they had nothing to do with 
manufacturing, but drew all their wealth from 
the soil by the work of bondmen. Their system 
was essentially feudal, and would have been 
entirely at home in Europe five hundred years 
ago. They held mock tournaments, and the 
ideal hero was always a soldier. 

To this people the prospect of war came as a 
delightful intoxication, for to them war meant 
sure victory and full quaffing at the glory cup. 

So in that historic winter of 1860-61 at the 



4& THE COMING CLIMAX 

South, life rushed on at an exhilarating pace. 
Balls, parties, dinners, patriotic speech-making, 
drumming, enlisting, marching and seceding, 
packed all the hours of day and night with events 
of absorbing interest. But through all this wild 
whirl of unceasing excitement, the ablest and 
most astute band of statesmen, that ever directed 
the affairs of any country in any age of the 
world, kept coldly and patiently at their task of 
building up the Confederate States of America, 
with the purpose of making their new nation 
take place among the formidable powers of 
earth. 

At this distance of time, when the Southern 
Confederacy is only a memory, after the fact, 
wisdom is cheap, and almost any one can show 
why the South met defeat in the great war; but 
in the winter of i860 this task was not so easy. 
On the contrary, the leading statesmen of 
Europe, who studied the whole situation, even 
to its minutest details, with most scrupulous 
care, declared to a man that the Southern states 
would achieve independence, and that the great 
American republic was a thing of the past. 
From early in 1861 the London Times, which 



THE COMING CLIMAX 43 

was the authoritative mouth-piece of monarchi- 
cal opinion in Europe, again and again exult- 
antly declared that the United States govern- 
ment was destined to crumble into ruin. 

Why then was not the Southern Confederacy 
given recognition by the European powers, as a 
government de facto and de jure? If this had 
been done after the battle of Bull Run it is not 
probable that the war would have lasted the 
year out. The navies of France and England 
would have ignored our paper blockade of the 
Southern ports, and their commanding influence 
thrown openly on the side of the South, would 
have so disheartened the then factious and 
divided North, that a treaty of peace between 
the United States would doubtless have been 
signed by January i, 1862. 

Why then was it not done? Is it not reason- 
able to suppose that this abstention was in 
reality the result of profound and subtle policy 
on the part of European cabinets ? Their ruling 
desire was, to see the democratic idea in human 
government dishonored and discredited, by its 
overwhelming failure in the case of the greatest 
republic known to history. If this were accom- 
plished then the uneasy and aspiring masses of 



44 The coming climax 

the old world would settle down in despairing 
submission to the rule of absolutism. A swift 
recognition of the Southern Confederacy might 
establish two flourishing republics on the Amer- 
ican continent, which would in no wise invali- 
date the soundness of the democratic theory. 
But on the other hand, if the Northern and 
Southern states would battle with one another 
to the verge of mutual annihilation, then Euro- 
pean kings could sit safer on their thrones for 
many a hundred years to come. 

Eleven Southern states actually seceded, while 
Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri gave much of 
moral and material support to the Confederate 
states. Well might one of their wise and mas- 
terly leaders say: "Though many as the billows 
we are one as the sea; we can draw on a million 
square miles of territory and twelve millions of 
people for our men and resources. 

"The South is solid, and there is no record in 
modern history of such a nation being con- 
quered. We are twelve millions against eighteen 
millions, but our foe is given over to huckstering 
and money-making and is altogether unwarlike, 
whereas we of the South are soldiers by instinct 
and training, and in our very sports we mimic 



THE COMING CLIMAX 45 

war. We are on our own ground, the enemy 
must invade us, our homes are to be defended, 
and then every Southron will become as five 
men, and all terrible in battle. 

"The North has eighteen millions of people, 
but at least one-third of these are opposed to 
making war on the South, and will hang on to 
the skirts of those who would attack us. We 
have millions of old political brothers among 
them, and all their commercial and manufactur- 
ing concerns, which find a profitable market in 
the South, will through self interest oppose a 
war which bars them out of it. The shock of 
stopping business relations between the North 
and South will close thousands of northern 
factories, throw hundreds of thousands of em- 
ployes into idleness, paralyze the general trade 
of the country, cause an avalanche of business 
failure, and undoubtedly produce bread-riots in 
the North's leading cities. 

"Then, England must and will have our cot- 
ton; it is her commercial necessity. She is 
jealous of the United States and fears its ag- 
gression on the Canadian border, hence, wishes 
to see her growing power humbled. 

"So hoist the Bonnie Blue flag, continue to 



46 THE COMING CLIMAX 

muster in our gallant boys, for it will be well to 
over-awe the Yankees by an imposing force; but 
there will not be enough war to work off the 
exuberance of our valiant volunteers, and the 
Southern Confederacy has already entered upon 
its long, prosperous and illustrious career." 

Any fair-minded philosopher, who reviews 
the entire situation in America as it was in 1861, 
must conclude that the Southerners had ample 
warrant for their sanguine hopes. But the 
South failed and suffered crushing defeat, where 
the mathematical figuring of the Southern Con- 
federacy's shrewd architects called for tri- 
umphant victory. 

Why was this? 

Simply because they had left out of their cal- 
culations a momentous factor which declares 
itself whether or no. This was the unknown 
quantity of God's influence in human affairs, 
which is always present, and at the long last 
inexorably determines the result. 

The North and South were mutually ignorant 
of one another on some matters of prime impor- 
tance in forming a correct opinion as to the 
final issue of the conflict. Considering their 



THE COMING CLIMAX 47 

ample means for obtaining exact information, 
we should be much surprised at this fact, if we 
were not confronted by a parallel case in our 
own country to-day, with the remarkable excep- 
tion that the ignorance in this instance is all on 
one side, viz: on the part of the contented 
classes, who will not see, or if they do see, will 
not acknowledge the wide-spread and porten- 
tous discontent on the part of the producing 
masses. 

The South believed that, at the last extrem- 
ity, the North would be dominated by its com- 
mercial instincts and refuse to go into the war. 
There would be no money in it. They also 
rather looked down upon the Northerners as non- 
combative individuals. They seemed to have 
forgotten that a slow-rising but stubborn wrath 
together with dogged patience under disaster 
have always marked the men of Anglo-Saxon 
blood; and that quality failed not in this in- 
stance, as the Southerners found out. 

Instead of the predicted languishment of trade, 
prostration of industries, and hosts of idle, hun- 
gry and dangerous workers, no sooner had the 
necessities of the war called forth the govern- 
mental money-system of Secretary Chase than 



48 THE COMING CLIMAX 

the country entered at once upon an era of 
unprecedented material prosperity. All artisans 
and laborers were employed at high wages. 
The farmers' produce multiplied in price, so 
that all the burdens of war, the increased value 
of articles of general consumption, and a minute 
and far-reaching system of internal-revenue tax- 
ation, were all borne with ease by the people, 
and the North came out of the war richer by 
billions of dollars than when it started in. 

After the firing on Fort Sumter, the North 
showed its lack of appreciation of the task before 
it, by calling out 75,000 volunteers for three 
months. The Government was misled by the 
ease with which General Jackson extinguished 
the South Carolina nullifiers, and also by the 
tremendous scare which spread over the South, 
when John Brown and twenty men invaded 
Virginia. The North also credited the South- 
erners with being largely blusterers and brag- 
garts, whose enthusiastic desire for fight might 
ooze away very quickly on the rough edges of 
battle. They little thought that this languid 
and self-indulgent people, in their devotion to 
a false ideal, would sacrifice every dear thing 
which men have to lose. 



THE COMING CLIMAX 49 

They fought on and on, when their much- 
prized slaves were gone, when their whole land 
was seamed and scarred by the invaders' track 
of fire. They fought by the light of their blaz- 
ing homes. They fought in hunger and in rags. 
They fought on and on, when once proud regi- 
ments of a thousand men showed less than a 
hundred muskets; but the thinned ranks still 
closed steadily on the center and held an un- 
flinching front. They fought, as they had 
vowed to fight, "to the last ditch," where fight- 
ing could be no more. Before such immortal 
heroism, all antecedent sins and blunders be- 
come venial, and the tongue of censure may well 
be silent. 

If the North and South had known the awful 
calamities that were before them, would they 
have entered upon that dread war? 

Never. 

They would have come together like brothers, 
crying, "What shall we do to be saved from this 
impending curse ?" They would have swiftly 
taken counsel of mercy and justice and healed 
their animosities God's voice, that had so long 
implored them to free the slave, and thus put 



50 THE COMING CLIMAX 

away in peace a national crime, would have at 
last been heard and gladly obeyed. 

Were there no prophets then in our land to 
speak to the people of the coming woe? Yes, 
there were many, both North and South, who 
read aright the evil signs of the times, and 
shouted aloud that a mighty storm was upon us. 
But their warnings were unheeded. In i860 the 
people knew of all the premonitory rumblings of 
the preceding forty years, but they stolidly denied 
their relentless logic, and were only convinced 
when the final convulsion came. 

Times are much the same with us at present. 
Where there was then one voice crying in the 
wilderness there are now an hundred. But do 
the people heed? 

No, they do not heed. There is the same 
contented optimism that will not look beyond 
the calm of to-day. There are only a few rag- 
ged clouds along the horizon line, and we will 
not see in them storm portents for the morrow. 

The great civil war is gone. It has become a 
tragic chapter in the history of the human race. 
Yet somewhat of the pain and sorrow of it still 
lingers with us — and shall for many a year to 



THE COMING CLIMAX 51 

come. Is its mission to our country otherwise 
closed? Out of its supreme agony, can there 
come no perennial blessing to after generations 
of Americans? 

To affirm this, would be to impeach God's 
benevolence. 

It would be to deny His rule in the universe. 

The Almighty Father has kindly given man 
memory that he may wisely guide his future by 
the errors of the past. 

If our people shall now see in that grievous 
war, not only judgment and punishment, but 
also a Divine lesson set for our instruction 
whose righteous teachings we can apply in deal- 
ing with present emergencies, then will that 
devastating conflict, with its temporary misery 
— seem as naught, beside the enduring benefac- 
tion that it gave. 



CHAPTER III 

WHERE DO WE STAND TO-DAY? 

When the consequences of a principle are exhausted, and the edifice 
which had rested upon it for centuries is threatened with ruin.it behooves 
us to shake the dust from our feet and hasten elsewhere. And now the 
times are ripe. The consequences of the principle of individuality, 
dominant over the past, are exhausted. The Republic is the enthrone- 
ment of the principle of association, of which liberty is merely an 
element, a necessary antecedent. Association is synthesis, and synthe- 
sis is divine: it is "'the lever of the world, the only method of regeneration 
vouchsafed to the human family. — Joseph Mazzini. 

After the battle of Austerlitz, when Napoleon 
was the best known man in the civilized world, 
the great conqueror, moved by a quaint whim 
which was a natural outgrowth of his imperial 
egotism, asked Fouche, his million-eyed minis- 
ter of police, if it were possible that there was 
in all France a grown person of average intelli- 
gence and sound mind, who had never even 
heard of him. Fouche, obedient to humor this 
queer conceit of his august master, remarked 
that he would take particular pains to ascer- 
tain if there were such an one, and forthwith 
the secret and known agents of the police de- 
partment, who swarmed the country from the 
Rhine to the Pyrenees, were given this odd 

52 



THE COMING CLIMAX 53 

quest as an incidental task. The search was 
long and minute, but at last the much-sought- 
for ignoramus was found. He existed in the 
person of a lame, taciturn and partially deaf 
man who lived in a rugged, sparsely settled sec- 
tion away from the high roads, yet only about 
fifty miles from Paris. His occupation was the 
growing of mushrooms. All his transactions 
with the outside world were conducted through 
an uncommunicative individual whose whole 
thought was absorbed in commercial matters. 
. The few casual visitors took no pains to con- 
verse with a surly old man who was hard of 
hearing, and so no echo of the Bastile's mighty 
fall came to his ears. Louis XVI. and Marie 
Antoinette perished on a scaffold. The Reign 
of Terror filled the nation with death and hor- 
ror. The Committee of Public Safety sent forth 
vast armies which defied all Europe. A Corsi- 
can soldier of fortune made a dazzling series of 
victorious battles the stepping stones to an 
Emperor's throne, and through all these tragic 
changes, which completely transformed the 
social, religious and political aspects of his native 
land, the old man kept on growing mushrooms 
and trading them for coarse clothes, coarse 



54 THE COMING CLIMAX 

bread, smoked sausage, bundles of leeks, twists 
of tobacco, and now and then a bottle of cheap 
red wine. He was ignorant of all the revolu- 
tions and was content; for the only revolution 
which might interest him was one in which 
mushrooms should cease to grow, or people 
cease to buy them. 

The mushroom man knew absolutely nothing 
as to what was going on in France, Fouche 
practically knew everything and was far better 
informed than Napoleon himself. The French 
people, in degree and amount of information 
which they possessed as to affairs in their own 
country, showed all the gradations of knowledge 
between these two extremes. So thorough and 
effective was Bonaparte's censorship of the 
press, that even men most anxious for the actual 
facts of the day found themselves balked in their 
quest, and had to depend upon Napoleon's lying 
bulletins and the skillfully doctored reports of his 
official newspapers. Under that imperial tyrant 
the suppression of unpleasant news was reduced 
to a science, and so complete was the system 
that the battle of Trafalgar in 1805, which blotted 
out the French navy, was only known to the peo- 
ple of France as a vague and indefinite rumor, 



THE COMING CLIMAX 55 

until the full facts came out when the allied 
armies occupied Paris in 1814. 

This circumstance is amazing, and we marvel 
at it, but it is by no means so remarkable as the 
spectacle of millions of well-to-do and highly 
cultured citizens of a great republic remaining 
densely and shamefully ignorant of the most 
formidable uprising of wealth-creators that ever 
occurred in any country or age, even while it 
was taking place in their own land. This insen- 
sate ignorance continued not only during the 
slow growth of the mighty movement, but stol- 
idly persisted, after it had assumed impressive 
proportions that marked it out as a potential 
factor in the future of the nation. Aye! this 
ostrich-head-hiding foolishness endured on the 
part of our great well-off middle-class, even 
after the sublime thinkers and conscious seers of 
the time had with one voice declared, that this 
titanic banding together of farmers and other 
toilers was the sure precursor of the most stu- 
pendous moral revolution of the centuries, a 
revolution which no human power could either 
halt or set back, before whose onward sweep 
hostile opposition would become futile, and its 
soldiery be ground to powder; but which, on the 



56 THE COMING CLIMAX 

other hand, if met with wise and Christian co- 
operation on the part of our whole people, could 
be turned into beneficent channels that would 
bring rich and lasting blessings not only to our 
own day and country, but to the men of coming 
generations and far-distant lands. 

Among all the puzzling problems which this 
epoch of supreme changes will furnish to the 
speculative philosopher of after-times, none will 
be more vexing than the present supine atti- 
tude of our well-to-do and all-powerful middle 
class, when brought front to front with a com- 
manding emergency out of which good can come 
to them if they act with wise philanthropy, but 
which will hurl evil on them if neglected or 
ignored. 

And mark you, all this turning of the back on 
insistent facts takes place not in a land under 
despotic press censorship, where want of infor- 
mation is excusable, but in a nation where 
newspaper literature goes abroad unchained, and 
which publishes more journals than all the rest 
of the world put together. 

Truly the historians of a thousand years to 
come will have good cause for much scratching 
ot dazed heads when they consider this astound- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 57 

ing phenomenon, and strive to reconcile its 
existence with shrewd common sense being a 
general possession of the people at large. 

Take the witness stand, Hon. Gold Bullion, 
Wall Street banker, New York City, and tell 
these inquiring gentlemen of ten centuries hence, 
as to the general status of affairs in the United 
States of America on August i, 1891. 

Quoth Bullion: "Trade is in a most flourishing 
condition. Crops exceptionally good all over 
the country, and light foreign grain-yield. Put 
prices up! 

"Government bonds solid and in prime de- 
mand at home and abroad. All approved 
domestic securities actively sought for. Consoli- 
dation of great industries and commercial enter- 
prises into trusts, and the railways into pools 
and systems, give such assurance of our finan- 
cial stability, that cash from abroad pours into 
the country for permanent investment. 

"The United States is now the richest country 
in the world, and we are piling up wealth with 
greater rapidity than ever before. The rights 
of property never were more sacredly guarded, 
for our law-makers and judges rightfully recog- 



58 THE COMING CLIMAX 

nize that the interests of capital must be para- 
mount in a well-ordered state of society. 

"We no longer fear popular legislation for the 
benefit of the lower orders, which might upset 
the special privileges of the better classes, 
because both the great political parties are 
under our control, and their leaders in our pay. 
No laws hostile to the interests of the Patri- 
cians can be passed either in the national con- 
gress or several state legislatures, and if any 
were, we have the President and Governors to 
veto them, and as last defense, obedient supreme 
courts to pronounce them unconstitutional. 

"We have the ambitious middle-class solidly 
with us, for all of them hope to be millionaires 
sometime. So it is impossible for any democratic 
leveling down to be done for the advantage of 
the vulgar working masses without a successful 
revolution on their part ; and that we are pre- 
pared to meet with our national guards and reg- 
ular army. 

"As for me personally, the banking business 
is good, and I double my wealth every eight 
years — and lastly, this American Republic is the 
greatest, grandest, freest, and happiest nation 
on the face of the earth — I ask for none better. 



THE COMING CLIMAX 59 

"I have one sailing and one steam yacht, 
three country mansions, one city palace, forty 
horses, ten carriages and one hundred and 
twenty servants. Hurrah for George Washing- 
ton! he knew what he was about when he 
invented this land of the free and home of the 
brave." 

Mr. Plutocratic Senator, take the stand. 

"I have always maintained since my state 
legislature honored me by an election to my pres- 
ent high office, which only cost me $320,000 for 
incidental expenses, that the United States was 
destined to lead all the Nations of the Earth. 

"Our people are rapidly becoming homogene- 
ous in thought and aspiration, and the spectacle 
of vast fortunes made by men who a few years 
ago were only common, every-day individuals, 
stimulates the hope of doing the same in every 
one. 

"So long as our citizens as a body are lauda- 
bly engaged in trying to improve their condi- 
tion, they will naturally leave the governing of 
the country in the hands of those specially fitted 
for the work, and everything will move on in 
perfect peace and harmony. 



60 THE COMING CLIMAX 

"As for the present Farmers* Alliance People's 
Party furore, that is merely a surface flurry and 
will soon die down. It is a movement engi- 
neered by cranks and restless agitators, and the 
good crop now being harvested will send the 
rank and file back to their work of voting con- 
tentedly with the old parties as their fathers did 
before them. The cities of the old world have 
frequently had bread-riots when people were 
hungry, but full-stomached riots are unheard of. 
Thus, with the farmers — for now that their 
granaries will soon be full to bursting, all dis- 
content and third parties will vanish. 

"As for the workingmen of towns, cities, rail- 
ways and mines, they are constitutionally in- 
clined toward turbulence, and we may be com- 
pelled to pass stringent laws for their repression. 
In the opinion of the 'better classes' the time 
has now come to make our government stronger, 
and we shall immediately proceed to do so as 
soon as we have labor outbreaks of sufficient 
magnitude to justify our so doing in the opinion 
of the great middle class, which we Patricians 
highly respect but decline to associate with." 

Mr. Baccarat Blood, of the exclusive four 
hundred, take the stand. 



THE COMING CLIMAX 61 

"Yes, America has greatly improved as a liv- 
ing place in the last few years. Up to twenty 
years ago it was simply unendurable for well- 
bred society people, such jostling and impudence 
on the part of vulgar, common folks who were 
forever prating of republican equality and such 
silly stuff. At that time an aristocratic Ameri- 
can could not feel at home in his own country, 
and in self-defense was obliged to live mainly 
abroad in Paris, London, Vienna or St. Peters- 
burg, where the lower orders are kept in their 
proper place. But now in 1891 it is just lovely, 
and we are proud of being Americans, and cele- 
brate the Fourth of July with much champagne 
enthusiasm. The people of wealth and stand- 
ing are now in control of the Government, which 
is quite the correct thing, and society will soon 
be marked off into distinct castes, where each 
one will keep the place he was born into — for 
when all the wealth of the country is concentrated 
in the hands of the Patricians, as it soon will be, 
then there will be no way in which low-born 
poor persons can break into the ruling class, for 
the avenue by the way of riches will be closed to 
them. 

"When that happy time arrives, the doctors, 



62 THE COMING CLIMAX 

lawyers, scientific men, preachers and literary 
folks will be as they are in Germany, the well- 
used upper servants of the wealthy governing 
caste, while all the lower orders will work con- 
tentedly at their several callings. The common 
people of America have been educated clear 
beyond their stations, and have ambitions that 
are not only unbecoming but dangerous to the 
peace of the state. That evil will, however, 
regulate itself when the property of the country 
passes into the hands of the Patrician caste — 
for then these vulgar persons will no longer be 
able to pay taxes to support high-schools, and 
the governing class of course will not pay out 
their money for such absurd and perilous pur- 
poses. As for these agitating reformers who are 
now endeavoring to excite the democratic pas- 
sions of the Farmers' Alliance mob, they merely 
arouse my contempt. If their followers become 
tumultuous we have Gatling guns and Pinker- 
ton's private army to shoot them down, and 
courts to condemn their leaders for inciting in- 
surrection. In fact, it will be necessary to make 
our Government somewhat stronger than it is, in 
order to meet all possible emergencies. 

"Ta-ta, you must excuse me now, for I am 



THE COMING CLIMAX 63 

dreadfully rushed with business to-aay. A few 
of my gentlemen friends and myself breakfast at 
eleven o'clock at Delmonico's with some very 
dainty actresses. At one o'clock there is to be 
a dog-fight in the palatial stables of one of our 
set. At three o'clock, after a champagne 
luncheon, we take our Tally-ho coaches for the 
races. We have a swell dinner at the club at 
seven o'clock; then I join a theater party to see 
the latest Parisian ballet sensation — then we go 
to a very retired up-town hall and witness a 
prize-fight between two famous sluggers, who 
are known to go in for blood. After that we 
are due at a quiet little card party where the 
stakes are always enough to make it interesting; 
from thence we go to our rooms and to bed at 
six o'clock in the morning. 

"So you perceive that we society aristocrats 
have our days and nights packed full of impor- 
tant business, and are by no means the languid 
drones which these slanderous reform editors 
declare us to be. " 

Ho! Mr. Erstwhile serenely content middle- 
class man, take seat in the box and give us your 
convictions as to the beatific state of America 
in this year of grace 1891, 



64 THE COMING CLIMAX 

And lo, the witness shows somewhat of incer- 
titude and embarrassment while thus he speaks: 

"To-day I am an agnostic on the present 
social, political, and economic status. I scarce 
know what I do believe, for the foundations of 
an old faith which I once dearly loved and 
loudly professed — have been much shaken, of 
late years. 

"One short decade ago and my voice was as 
that of Hon. Gold Bullion, to whom these times 
are so very kind, and I exulted much in this 
proud American nation, which at the risk of life 
I helped to keep intact and one. It was my 
home as it had been that of my fathers, and to 
have doubt of it, or aught of its belongings, 
was heresy rank and unpardonable. I chanted 
its high perfection and all-sufficiency — as a pre- 
cious creed — and gloried that this land of liberty 
and equal rights for all was mine by deed 
inalienable. 

"In earlier years I joyed to know that my 
willing hand, though scarce significant, helped 
on my country's upward way. But now, alas! 
another power, as strange as strong, bears on 
the car of state, and there is no place for the 
glad service of simple-hearted citizens on fair 



THE COMING CLIMAX 65 

work and honesty intent. Trained professionals 
alone can master the complex maze of this new 
mechanism, and volunteers must stand aloof. 
And worst of all, the old-time ease of life has 
diminished. The full mastery of my own fortune, 
through thrift and toil and wise forethought, has 
gone from me, and limitations rise stern and 
high against my work and will. 

"I begin to wonder if these late-born monarchs 
of ready cash — these hundred-million-dollared 
lords — these corporations vast and rich, whose 
wondrous necromancy gathers in the country's 
hard- wrought wealth, have not absorbed some- 
what of the just prosperity that belongs of right 
to me and mine — and as I do now look with 
fond regret at my own yesterday I tremble for 
my child's to-morrow. " 

x Mr. Hayseed Farmer, it is your turn now. 
And behold the witness marches up with an air 
of easy confidence in himself, that is quite at 
variance with the Plutocratic notion of the 
diffident clod-hopping granger. Many illusions 
have gone a-glimmering down among the things 
that were, of late years, and this is one of them, 

S 



66 THE COMING CLIMAX 

and thus the brown and brawny man doth 
speak: 

"I voice the plaint of millions of my class who 
till the soil, for everywhere our woe is one, and 
we bring the same indictment against the pres- 
ent order of things in the great American repub- 
lic. Our ills are the same wherever you may 
go, whether it be among the fields that abut 
against an unbroken wall of pines far down in 
Maine, in narrow gorges ridged in by Alleghany 
or Rocky Mountains, where the crop must be 
wrenched from the reluctant soil by main 
strength, or in that vast zone of fertility called 
the Mississippi valley which is the world's ideal 
home for the farmer. In all these conditions 
and localities, so diverse and distant from each 
other, the farmer's lot remains the same, and it is 
a universally unsatisfactory one. It matters not 
what crop he may raise, whether it be cotton, 
corn, wheat, potatoes or rice. It does not 
affect his general state, whether railways and 
great marketing centers be near or far away, for 
favoring environments fail to rescue him from 
the onward sweep of a malign current that bears 
him ever nearer to bankruptcy. Old New York 
State and young Kansas are alike blanketed 



THE COMING CLIMAX 67 

with mortgages. The valuation of Ohio's farms 
decreased one hundred million dollars between 
1880 and 1890. In the great prairie state of 
Illinois the rural population is steadily diminish- 
ing, while the general population of the com- 
monwealth steadily increases, and yet Illinois 
has hundreds of thousands of rich acres that 
have never felt the plow. 

"Strange anomaly here, and well worthy of the 
patriotic statesman's considerations. Nine mil- 
lion mortgages, aggregating billions of dollars, 
on the homesteads of the men who toil the 
hardest and most hours of any class of workers 
in the country, and a class withal familiar with 
economy and frugal living. 

" The farmers declare there is something sadly 
out of joint or these evil conditions could not 
be. The Patrons of Husbandry, the Alliances, 
Patrons of Industry and Farmers' Mutual Bene- 
fit Association, with a combined membership of 
over five millions of farmers, offer organized 
evidence that the farmers are deeply dissatisfied, 
and the growing political revolt now finding 
expression in the rapid up-building of the Peo- 
ple's Party only gives it sterner emphasis. 

"The evils which have pushed the farmer on 



68 THE COMING CLIMAX 

the downhill road to Poverty-flat were so com- 
plex and subtle in their working that for a long 
time he was in doubt as to their absolute iden- 
tity But of late he has found out his malign 
enemies and knows they are a pair of twin 
demons, closely ligatured together by commu- 
nity of interest, and their names are: 

"Private Monopoly of the people's money. 

"Private Monopoly of the people's railways. 

"And between the two the farmer's prosperity 
has been shorn away as by a giant pair of shears. 
The continued existence of these devastators is 
a shame to the republic. They are monstrous 
and unnatural creatures in a government 
founded on the democratic idea, and the banded 
farmers of America will soon close with them 
in a death-grapple. 

"As for agitators, demagogues, and peace dis- 
turbers, I don't know any such people, but I do 
know some good farmers who are good talkers 
and talk for the people's good, and good editors 
who are good writers, and write for the people's 
good. Rich corporation-lawyers and rich cor- 
poration-newspapers call these good men all 
sorts of bad names, but they better keep their 
hands off them." 



THE COMING CLIMAX 6& 

Walk up to the witness-stand, ye represen- 
tatives of three million organized toilers who 
work in the mines, shops, railways and factories, 
and tell your stories. 

Their tales are one and the same. They are 
banded against the same foe, doubly terrible 
because impersonal and intangible. 

A great invisible power is bearing down upon 
and crushing them into the earth. It exists as 
an inexorable tendency in the mechanism of so- 
ciety. It is a part of the structure of the 
status quo in its totality. It has grown with 
our growth and strengthened with our strength. 
No one man is responsible for it, nor is any one 
class of men, for it is our heritage from the 
past. It is woof of our commercial traditions 
and web of our long-time industrial customs. 

In centuries gone by it bore unmixed blessing 
to man, for it served to develop his courage, 
patience and economy, it stimulated to construct- 
ive toil and inventive thought. It called forth 
the intellectual resources of the individual, and 
made him self-reliant, watchful and bold, and 
thus laid broad and deep foundations for our 
modern civilization. 

This upbuilding power came through free 



70 THE COMING CLIMAX 

competition between man and man, and the uni- 
versal human incentive to get on in the world, 
and by their unrestricted play a more perfect 
order of society was evolved with increased 
comforts and luxuries, with greater security to 
life and property, a wider intellectual culture, 
enlarged moral perceptions, and more complex 
and equitable social and governmental systems. 

As from childhood to maturity we succes- 
sively put away garments, studies and tasks, 
that are either out-worn or have had their day, 
so must it be in the evolutionary march of man 
from lower to higher civilizations. 

Social and industrial institutions, that were 
good in their time, must be put aside when they 
have served their uses, and new tools and 
methods be devised that are more in harmony 
with the needs of a more exalted cycle of being. 

If this age and country are not now being irre- 
sistibly pushed upward to a loftier epoch, then 
do the sages and philosophers of our day much 
misread the signs of the times. 

These millions of anxious workers are likewise 
true prophets; their fears and necessities have 
given them words of wisdom. They tell us that 
under our stable government all property gravi- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 71 

tales towards the possessors of wealth. Toil- 
ers increase, while labor-saving machinery passes 
under the control of capital. Workers compete 
with each other for work, which brings into 
operation the iron law of wages, which finally 
would make the compensation of the laborer 
just enough to enable him to do his toil and 
reproduce himself. 

Right here you have the genesis of all the 
defensive labor organizations and all the strikes 
in the United States. 

Messrs. Plutocratic French-mushroom-man 
ignoramuses! Messrs. Well-to-do Ostrich-head- 
hiders, who will not credit that which you wish 
not to believe, we invite your attention to the 
formidable array which now confronts the status 
quo you find so pleasant. 

You had best look at it now, for a little later 
and you must, perforce, whether you will or no. 

Millions of farmers and workingmen — in fact 
all the hard-handed creators of the wealth of to- 
aay, whose willing toil also gives the sole 
value to all the garnered wealth of all the yester- 
days, rise up and say as one man and most 
pathetically, "We are discontent with present 



72 THE COMING CLIMAX 

conditions, for an equitable portion of the wealth 
that we create does not remain with us to 
bless ourselves and families. We only demand a 
righteous adjustment of present evil conditions. 
"Will you help us? We ask naught of your 
stored-up hoard of wealth, and will not be curi- 
ous as to how you came by it; we look not to 
the past, but to the future, and want merely 
that value which is wrought out with our own 
hands." 

O ye foolish generation of plutocrats, who 
own the Government, who own the judiciary, 
who own both of the rotten old political parties, 
who own the daily newspapers, who dominate 
the financial, industrial and commercial systems 
of the country, will ye much longer scoff at this 
mighty uprising of the toiling masses? Will ye 
much longer ignore it, deny it, give battle 
against it? 

Think you to placate Demos, standing wrath- 
ful and titanic, with your McKinley tariff bill^ 
Blaine reciprocity and Rockefeller's advice of 
"Don't drink, but economize, and all will be 
well with you?" 

Do you think to juggle God Almighty out of 
the progress he has decreed for man? 



THE COMING CLIMAX Td 

Will you continue to affirm, both by word and 
deed, that the world is pretty well as it is, and 
needs no essential bettering? 

Will you essay to block the wheels of evolu- 
tion by your puny plausibilities? 

O ! ye plutocrats ! We know how hopeless it 
is to appeal to your diviner natures, foi you are 
drunken with the pride of power and gold, and 
heed not the cry, "Let my people go free." 

But to the great moral, liberty-loving, and 
God-revering middle class of America, we do 
make confident appeal. They have at last awak- 
ened, and are looking about them. They know 
for a verity that the long-impending crisis is near 
at hand. God has struck the hour for a New 
Dispensation. He has set a task before the 
good men of this generation, which they must 
do, or be punished with a heavy hand. 

Remember the awful war of the Rebellion, for 
it was God's rod smiting a neglectful people. 
Now is the hour in which to toil for man, under 
the smile of Heaven. Rise up and do the will 
of the Father, and all shall be peace and bless- 
ing, and the coming days shall be filled with the 
sunlight of Christ's presence. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE MUTTERING OF THE STORM 

"There are standing armies in foreign lands ready to suppress out- 
breaks of a socialistic and a nihilistic character. But here where the 
people are the rulers, nothing is more dangerous than the ballot in the 
hand of a discontented citizen, and a feeling of injustice and a desire for 
revenge behind it. I am not an alarmist or a ringer of an alarm-bell, but 
I affirm as my belief from what I have seen and heard during the last 
fifteen years that republican institutione are still on trial, and fear in the 
second century, distress and violence in company may work an evil in 
comparison with which the perils of the civil war were puerile. * * 
For the hist time we hear it declared there shall be an abolition of 
debts, public and private; that there shall be no more taxes; that there 
shall be in this country a forcible redistribution of property. A pretty 
serious problem." 

The foregoing extracts are from an address 
recently delivered by Hon. John J. Ingalls, late 
United States Senator from Kansas, and now 
theoretical statesman at large. His subject was 
"The Social and Political Problems of our Second 
Century." We congratulate the gentleman 
upon his selection of a topic for public discourse, 
for in the entire list of questions which now 
challenge the best thought of the time, there are 
none so full of fate for our future, as those 
embraced in the field of inquiry he has chosen 
to explore. The philanthropic statesman, the 
humane philosopher, and the Christian publicist, 

74 



The coming climax 75 

can find therein fitting occupation for their 
very uttermost of conscientious investigation, 
exhaustive study, and constructive thought. 

These are no ordinary problems. They have 
not to do with accommodating methods to the 
gradually changing status of social and political 
institutions. They do not contemplate the mere 
modification of old industrial and commercial 
forms to slightly changed popular conditions. 
No, while these problems may have concern 
with the amendment of certain existing systems, 
they also launch stern interrogatories at the 
congeries of systems, which constitute the pres- 
ent order of society, and question its right to 
continued existence. 

All the omens indicate that human civiliza- 
tion is rapidly approaching a momentous climac- 
teric. We live in a time when tremendous 
transitions are almost upon us. An ages-old 
cycle has well-nigh rounded its course, and a 
new and loftier one invites mankind to nobler 
tasks and a truer life than it ever knew before. 
Our present order of society inhabits a structure 
that is so worn by time and weakened by decay, 
that it no longer serves the full needs of its 



76 THE COMING CLIMAX 

occupants, and a fierce wind beats upon it that 
foretells a greater storm. 

The problem of problems for this generation 
is: Shall we continue to lie supine until the 
crash comes and we are buried under the tumult- 
uous wreckage, or shall we rise up like sensible 
men, and go to work strengthening, enlarging 
and rebuilding, until all is safe, sound and com- 
fortable. A divine call to this high duty is loud 
and clear to our ears. Will we heed its behest 
or must God's scourge again lash us to the 
task, as it did in our country's yesterday? 

A gentleman of Mr. Ingalls' conceded scholar- 
ship and knowledge might have given us much 
of information and instruction, concerning the 
impending crisis, which he made the text of his 
address. But alas! he did not do so. He con- 
fined himself strictly to predicting calamity, and 
gave no detailed statement of the causes which 
would bring it about, or the results that might 
be sequential to it. Least of all did he by word 
or hint suggest that wise statesmanship and 
obedience to the higher law of justice and right- 
eousness on the part of our whole people might 
find a path of safety through the threatening 
dangers. 



THE COMING CLIMAX 77 

His address was after the manner of the man, 
flippant, brilliant, epigrammatic and full of ter- 
giversation. His rhetoric was that of the cor- 
rupt days of the Roman Empire, when literary 
genius had vanished with the liberties of the 
people, and the degenerate men of letters were 
only great in satire. He gave true monarchical 
scoff at the democratic idea, and declared that 
in the 115th year of Washington's republic, free 
institutions were still on trial in America. He 
slandered the mighty moral uprising of the great 
plain people of the nation, by branding it as a 
movement toward the abolition of all debts, 
public and private, and the forcible redistribu- 
tion of property. And yet withal, this was a 
prize oration, by the Triumphant Plutocracy's 
most gifted, most audacious and most atheistic 
orator. 

We quite agree with Mr. Ingalls, however, 
when he says that "we are threatened with 
evils in comparison with which the perils of the 
civil war were puerile." We take this averment 
of the plutocracy's distinguished special pleader 
as an authoritative justification for our frank 
and fearless presentation of "The- Social and 
Political Problems of Our Second Century," as 
we see them. 



78 THE COMING CLIMAX 

If the dangers that menace our country's 
future were not one-hundredth part as mani- 
fest as they now are, we should be justified in 
drawing the possible catastrophe that threatens 
us in dark colors. Better by far magnify the 
peril than to ignore it. An oriental proverb 
says, "If thy enemy be a mouse fancy it an ele- 
phant." It is wiser to err on the side of over- 
caution than to come to grief through careless 
indifference. With the dreadful object-lesson 
of the war of the Rebellion only one generation 
away, it is the arrogance of unreasoning unbe- 
lief to affirm that even a greater calamity can- 
not soon befall us if we fail to prudently guard 
ourselves, when distinctly forewarned of the 
coming black day. 

Many most worthy persons optimistically 
avow that our Government is under the special 
guardianship of the Almighty, and that he will 
not allow any overwhelming disaster to descend 
upon us. Why he should select this generation 
for a particular care that he denied to the one of 
thirty years ago, is surely a puzzling problem, 
for if we are more pious and God-fearing peo- 
ple than those of 1861 we keep all evidence of 
the fact very closely under cover. 



THE COMING CLIMAX 79 

Nations like individuals are subject to the 
moral law, and disobedience is inexorably fol- 
lowed by punishment, and if this nation is not 
now guilty of infractions of the Divine order, 
then the multitudinous groanings and complain- 
ings which rise to heaven from our country's 
lowly millions have no meaning and are desti- 
tute of valid cause. 

Mr. Ingalls' grim prediction of an approach- 
ing convulsion is chiefly notable from its source, 
for while our wealthy class have long been can- 
vassing its probability, and have laid plans to 
crush any revolutionary outbreak in its incipi- 
ency, they have always taken counsel with one 
another on this matter in well-guarded privacy. 
It was impossible to keep the fact of such con- 
ferences from the well-informed, for they found 
verbal revelation through many avenues. But 
the managers of the great daily papers, that are 
one in interest with the plutocratic status quo, 
saw at a glance the gross impolicy of acknowl- 
edging any such fear in cold type, and have 
abstained from so doing. Until quite recently 
the leading reform orators and editors have been 
very chary of positive assertion on this point in 
their public utterances, and always touched 



80 THE COMING CLIMAX 

upon it by vague implication, and as a remote 
contingency. In their personal intercourse, 
however, with men of their own kind, they made 
no secret of their grave fears for the future. 

There are about 1,400 papers in the United 
States, pledged to the popular reform movement 
now going on. They are scattered all over the 
country, and accurately reflect the convictions 
and changing sentiment of millions of wealth- 
creators. The absolute verity of this statement 
cannot be successfully controverted. It is 
noticeable that within the past few months, 
these journals have taken on a sterner and more 
radical tone. Their editorials show an intense 
feeling of wrong, they are hot with wrath at cer- 
tain evil conditions, and the men and classes 
which stand for them. They are not in doubt 
as to their oppressors, but name them with ter- 
rible frankness. These newspapers of the peo- 
ple bristle with communications of sinister 
omen. Common men who work at the plow, 
at the forge, in mines, factories, shops and on 
railways, write them, and they utter the fears 
which are now somberly brooding in the souls of 
millions of their fellows. 

Alas, that so many of these letters speak of 



THE COMING CLIMAX 81 

war and blood. Not, mark you, as the wish of 
the writers that these horrors should be, but as 
the despairing conviction that our country is 
now being borne resistlessly onward by a stream 
of events which makes them an inevitable final- 

ity 

These are not pleasant words to write, but if 
they are the truth, the future well-being of our 
country demands that they be written with fear- 
less fidelity to the actual facts. With an emer- 
gency such as is herein set forth staring us in 
the face, only cowardly imbeciles will resort to 
ostrich-head-hiding, and push away the insistent 
information which might unpleasantly enlighten 
their ignorance. This generation cannot take 
to itself the sordid assurance of Louis XV and 
declare, "After me the deluge, the present con- 
dition will outlast my time/ 7 for no wise man 
dare confidently claim a single year of grace for 
our country. 

Only a people gone utterly daft will much 
longer resist the warning evidence which now 
implores a hearing. The supreme duty of this 
nation is to study all the facts of its present sit- 
uation with a painstaking care that neglects not 

6 



82 THE COMING CLIMAX 

the humblest byway through which knowledge 
may come. There is life or death for us in this 
task, and it is suicide to evade it. 

Our destiny is to-day in our hands and we can 
make it what we will. It is no time for slug- 
gards; men of resolute action are demanded, 
who will work while yet the day is, before the 
dark night comes when no man can work. To 
this toil on behalf of peace, civilization and 
justice, all classes of good citizens have call. 
The statesman who denies it is a charlatan. 
The philanthropist who shirks it is a hypocrite, 
and the Christian who passes it by is a traitor 
to his God. 

Ho, all ye unselfish and tender-hearted, and 
ye who believe in the Divine One, and love your 
fellowmen, come quickly to the task, for a 
harvest that belongs to a new dispensation is 
fast a-ripening, and the Eternal Father calls 
His children to the reaping, that they may earn 
thereby the promised Harvest Home. 

Take two human beings the most opposite in 
appearance and characteristics, and you will 
find that through their common humanity they 
have a larger number of points of resemblance 



THE COMING CLIMAX 83 

than of specific peculiarities wherein they differ. 
It is precisely the same with revolutions, for all 
of them show the same tragic marks of kinship, 
no matter how much their respective histories 
may vary in the matter of birth, incidents of 
existence, and final fate. 

All revolutions group themselves in two grand 
classes: first, those where the power sought to 
be overthrown is alien and external to the peo- 
ple of the revolting country, and second, those 
where the uprising is of the oppressed masses, 
against the master-caste of their own race and 
nation. 

In the first group, are the successful revolu 
tions of the Netherlanders against Spain, and 
of the American colonists against the mother 
country, together with the unsuccessful revolu- 
tions, of the Poles against Russia, of the Irish 
against the English, the Hungarians against the 
Austrians, and that of our Southern States 
against the General Government. 

In the second class are the revolt of the 
English toilers led by Wat Tyler in the four- 
teenth century, the peasant war of the sixteenth 
century, in Germany, the English rebellion of 
1640, the dynastic revolution of England in 



84 THE COMING CLIMAX 

1688, and that of France in 1830, the great 
French revolution, the temporary triumph of 
the people in nearly all the nations of Europe in 
1848, and -lastly the social and industrial revolu- 
tion that is now going on in our own day and 
country. 

While war in any shape is barbaric and brings 
shame upon our Christian civilization, it is usu- 
ally kept within humane limitations in the case 
of contests between nations. Even during the 
battle-storm the mechanism of society goes on 
working, and when the conflict is over, the com- 
mercial, social and political institutions of the 
respective countries are found to be essentially 
unharmed. But when a volcanic uprising of the 
people bursts mightily forth from within a 
nation, its first shock totally disintegrates the 
established order of things. It brings universal 
wreckage. There is no existing authority to 
which men can turn for guidance, and the red 
demon of Anarchy stalks triumphant through a 
land given over to chaos and old night. 

The Franco-German war of 1870, and the 
French revolution of 1789, are emphasized 
examples of these two types of war. Scarcely 
had the German troops withdrawn from France, 



THE COMING CLIMAX 85 

after a career of conquest that was overwhelm- 
ingly complete, than the French people sprang 
to their feet, went to work, paid an enormous 
tribute to their conqueror, and entered at once 
upon a course of wonderful prosperity. 

On the other hand, when the earthquake of 
the great revolution shook France, the old 
order crumbled to ruin. The kingly line of a 
thousand years vanished, and the gentlest ruler 
since St. Louis was dragged to die at the block. 
A church establishment venerated by unnum- 
bered generations was swept out of existence in 
a night, and its priesthood either wandered in 
exile or perished on the scaffold, The moral 
law of God and social and legal codes of man 
were alike trampled under foot. 

A fever of hate and suspicion possessed the 
souls of men. It is called in history "The 
Reign of Terror," and did not pass by until a 
million French people had been murdered by 
those of their own blood. They rotted in pris- 
ons, they were drowned by hundreds in old 
hulks of vessels. They were brought forth in 
companies to be shot down with musketry, and 
tens of thousands rode on tumbrels to death by 
the guillotine. At last one dread figure rose 



86 THE COMING CLIMAX 

above the satanic carnival and dominated it. 
Napoleon placed his iron hand on the throat of 
France and led her where he would. Three 
millions of her sons laid down their lives for him 
in battle, but at length, after twenty-five years 
of marching and slaughter, the long tragedy was 
over, and France lay in the dust under the 
armed heels of every nation in Europe. 

Could France have been saved from this 
abomination of desolation? Yes, if the ruling 
class, whose true mission it was to serve as wise 
directing intelligences for the benefit of all, had 
done their duty to God and man. 

But they did not do it. For centuries the 
king, aristocracy and priesthood had lived only 
for themselves. The only thought they gave to 
their millions of lowly brothers was how best to 
keep them enslaved, so that they could be 
worked and robbed with perfect security. 

At last when the "directive intelligences,' ' 
under the influence of fear, made concessions to 
the tumultuous serfs, it was too late, and served 
only to open the prison-door to their angered 
bondmen, who rushed forth to ravage and to 
slay. 



THE COMING CLIMAX 81 

Our American "directive intelligences" who 
are on top in Washington's republic, have had 
distinct warning of late years, that a "free- 
for-all," "devil-take-the-hindmost" civilization, 
where the crafty and strong always get the best 
of it, may not be a realization of the ideal state of 
society for humanity. It will be well for them 
and all of us if they will, in the future, give these 
significant intimations an attention which they 
have denied them in the past. But above all 
it will be dangerously unwise to try and dispose 
of them by scoffs, denials and sneers. God's 
messages of warning to man never have been 
effectively negatived in this manner, and proba- 
bly they will not down under such treatment, in 
this instance. 

We used the war of the Rebellion as illustrat- 
ing the logical result of tendencies now in exist- 
ence, because it is of our own country, is near 
us in point of time, and there are millions of our 
people still living who felt the agony of those 
days of tribulation in their own souls. But 
above and beyond all other considerations which 
make the philosophy of that civil war rich in 
teachings, is the fact that it demonstrated with 
unrelenting certainty that there is a terrible 



88 THE COMING CLIMAX 

danger-line beyond which rival schools of polit- 
ical thought are liable to pass, when pushed by 
intense convictions that are supplemented by 
selfish personal interests. Democratic republics 
find their supreme peril right there, as we know 
by bitterest experience, and what has been in 
the past may be again in the future. The citi- 
zens of the North and South, massed into antag- 
onistic armies numbering millions, took the nega- 
tive and affirmative on the question of slavery in 
the territories. The discussion waxing hot, they 
derided the constitutional solution offered by 
the ballot-box, and we know the result. This is 
the most vulnerable point in popular govern- 
ment, which can only be strengthened and made 
safe by the prompt exercise of wise statesman- 
ship so soon as a menacing emergency arises, but 
the services of legislators will be powerless 
unless vitalized by a commanding public opin- 
ion which declares itself on the side of peace and 
justice, and patriotically insists on righteous 
measures of reform being wrought into law with- 
out delay. 

The collective thought of millions of men 
focalized on one object is something to stand 
before in awe. Thought is the living soul of the 



THE COMING CLIMAX 89 

world. Thought builds civilizations and destroys 
them again. Thought, backed by purpose and 
will, holds all earthly potentialities. Given 
millions of men who day after day are thinking 
the same thoughts concerning an injustice that 
is the common lot of all, then is it sure that 
sooner or later that injustice will be put away 
in peace, it will be put away by force, or else 
some hostile agency must rise up, that is strong 
enough to crush the physical power of these 
millions of men, and thus prevent their thought 
from expressing itself in act. This is the state- 
ment of a dynamical fact in moral mathematics, 
and the history of the political progress of man- 
kind is merely a record of the sums which have 
been worked out by this arithmetical rule. 

All the gains for liberty that lie between the 
unyielding status of oriental despotism and our 
own flexible theory of democratic government 
have been secured by energized thought. The 
unceasing brooding of the lowly millions over a 
wrong is a tremendous creator of force which 
is carefully stored away for future use. It was 
made to do something, and shall surely account 
for itself in some way at the long last. The 
stream you turn into a reservoir, if wisely directed, 



90 THE COMING CLIMAX 

will drive the mill; if foolishly handled it bursts 
the dam. The ever-accumulating volume of 
water is bound to make some expression of its 
power. Sustained thought is thus cumulative 
in the manufacture of force, and it can finally 
transform and possess the thinker. 

The farmer of old revolutionary days first 
vaguely disliked King George the Third, then he 
hated him, and through him the British govern- 
ment. One morning he refused to drink his 
taxed tea, the next burned his stamped paper, 
and finally shot his red-coated soldiers in Con- 
cord Lane. All this came about by unconscious 
transitions as he was borne along on the stream 
of his thought. 

Persons curious in such matters may find it 
interesting to trace the gradual evolution of the 
stanch republican farmer of Kansas into a red- 
hot People's Party man. Students in that 
department of political science will have a rich 
field for investigation presented to them next 
year, unless all signs fail. 

There is something pathetic in marking the 
transforming influence of earnest thought on the 
typical American workingman during the last 
twenty-five years. In 1866 the walking dele- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 91 

gate and labor-agitator were unknown in the 
land. Why? — because they are effects, not 
causes. They had no reason for being, during 
flush times when all toilers were employed at 
good wages. Hence they were not. 

After a few years, owing to the contraction 
of the currency, the increase of labor-saving 
machinery, contract foreign workers and other 
causes, wages dropped and work was not so easy 
to get. Then the thought of the laborer turned 
to self-protection, and trade-unions were or- 
ganized. Here his thought led him on to consid- 
eration for his fellows. Loyalty to his league 
of workers became a part of his religion. His 
instinct of the brotherhood of man grew into a 
firm faith. He stood by the men of his own 
class through good and evil report. 

He struck. Yes, he struck, and in striking, 
struck a blow at the shackles of the slave, 
wherever he might be on God's green earth. 
Aye, and under it too, far down in the gloomy 
mine, where some men toil in an eternal mid- 
night, that other men who do no work may be 
great and rich. 

O ye comfortably circumstanced, to whom 



92 THE COMING CLIMAX 

this world is so sweet and fair that you repel 
the idea of having it changed, lest it might make 
it the worse — for you; do not fret and wax 
angry when you read that another big strike has 
broken out. That is the foolish part to take, 
and there is danger in it as well. That strike is 
proof positive that the mechanism of our indus- 
trial system is out of gear with the needs of the 
time, and it makes demonstration of the fact by 
suddenly stopping. If you cannot look at the 
circumstance from the benign attitude of God's 
divine charities, you can at least be selfishly 
shrewd in your own behoof. Do not get mad at 
the machine, but cast about and find some 
politico-economic Edison who shall repair it if 
possible, or in default of that, make a new and 
better one. 

Ten million producers, suffering under a sense 
of outrage which they are not slow in proclaim- 
ing, constitute a tolerably serious problem for 
the second century of our republic. These mill- 
ions have not as yet come into solidarity, but 
they are gravitating toward it with astounding 
rapidity, and it will only be a short time until 
it is an accomplished fact. 

What then? Why then, matters must move 



THE COMING CLIMAX 93 

in the way they wish them to, or something will 
break, or they themselves must be broken, 
crushed and annihilated. 

These men are thinkers, aye, stern thinkers, 
and they have the increment and momentum of 
twenty years of thought behind them. True, 
they are not now united, but their eyes are fixed 
on the same shining ideal, away off yonder, and 
all their varied paths converge toward it. Soon 
they shall be marching on the same highway, 
and then the tramping of their feet shall wake 
the slumbering nations. 

Good, easy, comfortable middle-class Ameri- 
cans, to whom dollars and fat dinners now 
come quite natural — this is a problem for your 
settling, and it partakes somewhat of the riddle 
of the Sphynx, which must be answered rightly, 
else the adventurer be destroyed. But it is not 
insoluble; God does not give His willing children 
impossible tasks. A wise patriotism, a rever- 
ence for justice, a Christian charity, and hearts 
inclining toward love and mercy for men, all 
working together, and vitalized by a firm deter- 
mination, can solve this problem blessedly for 
our country, and all the people thereof. 



CHAPTER V 

THE MUSTERING OF THE SQUADRONS 

"Some nations pursue liberty through all kinds of dangers and suffer- 
ings, not for its material benefits, they deem it so precious and essen- 
tial a boon that nothing could console them for its loss, while its enjoy- 
ment would compensate them for all possible afflictions. Others, on the 
contrary, grow tired of it in the midst of prosperity — they allow it to be 
torn from them without resistance rather than compromise the comfort it 
has bestowed on them by making an effort in its defense. What do they 
need in order to remain free? A taste for freedom. Do not ask me to 
analyze that sublime taste. It can only be felt. It has a place in every 
great heart which God has prepared to receive it — it fills and inflames it. 
To try to explore into those inferior minds who have never felt it is to 
waste time." — ["The Old Regime in France," by Alexis de Tocqueville. 

The distinguished author from whom we 
quota was the ablest and most impartial com- 
mentator on the science of government that 
ever lived. He could take a nation as a skilled 
mechanic takes a machine, shows how it was 
built, explains how it worked, indicates its weak 
points, and infallibly demonstrates why some of 
its essential parts wore out, and thus marred 
the efficiency of the entire organism. 

These words of the honored member of the 
French academy embody one of the loftiest 
generalizations ever drawn from the political 
history of mankind. And although they were 



THE COMING CLIMAX 95 

written many years ago and with particular 
reference to one nation, they are none the less 
applicable to all centuries and to all lands 
where the peoples are either losing their liberties 
through cowardly inertia, or are toilsomely gain- 
ing them by willing sacrifice and heroic effort. 

In a special manner does this philosophic 
utterance have high and prophetic significance 
for our people at the present time, because the 
forces pointed out by M. de Tocqueville as tend- 
ing to destroy freedom, and those which strive 
to protect it, are now ranged against one 
another in order of battle on the soil of Wash- 
ington's republic. 

The term "Plutocracy" has been naturalized in 
our American language. This came about 
because the word stands for a living fact. Please 
listen to the general accusation that ten million 
toiling freemen bring against it: 

"Of late years a new and malign entity forci- 
bly intruded itself into the complex life of our 
nation. A hitherto unknown but altogether 
formidable power slowly and surely assumed 
absolute dominion over our industrial, commer- 
cial and political systems. When this end fi- 
nally came the people perforce gave their oli- 



96 THE COMING CLIMAX 

garchic master a name, and they called the all- 
potential hydra-head the Plutocracy. 

"Loosely, but sufficiently defined, the Plutoc- 
racy is the aggregated wealth of the nation's 
rich men and corporations, thoroughly organized 
and massed, under talented, energetic and un- 
scrupulous generals. These leaders advance the 
column along the whole line against the wealth- 
creators of the country, for the purpose of tak- 
ing the fruits of their toil to the uttermost. The 
prosperity of the producer is trampled under foot 
by the invading host, and now the liberties of 
the citizen vanish amid the general spoliation. 

"The Triumphant Plutocracy has destroyed 
the nice balance between the rights of property 
and the rights of men as they once existed, and 
now when issue is joined between money and 
man — the man is forced to the wall. It has 
changed the People's courts of justice into the 
Plutocracy's courts of law. It has made the 
legislative function of the Government its hum- 
ble servitor. While under its subtle necromancy 
the forms of our popular institutions remain, 
their spirit has gone, and the United States is 
no longer a government of the people, by the 
people and for the people. 



THE COMING CLIMAX 97 

"The old-time theory that the only valid rea- 
son of being of a democracy is to do the great- 
est good to the greatest number of its citizens, 
has been put away and now its sole mission is 
held to be that of an umpire. If the strong and 
crafty compel the weak and simple to fight 
them on their own ground with their own weap- 
ons, the government must take no consideration 
of mercy, justice and the eternal moralities, but 
keep its eyes fixed on the rules of the combat 
as laid down by the Plutocracy and let the duel 
to the death go on. It is as if the shepherd sat 
on a stump and impartially allowed the wolves 
and sheep to fight it out — and if the sheep hap- 
pened to be lacking in the matter of jaws and 
teeth, it was merely their misfortune and the 
wolves' legitimate advantage. 

"The idea that the republic was under any 
righteous obligation to do the best it could for 
the well-being of the mass of its citizens is voted 
by the Plutocrats to be rank heresy. It is next 
door to that dreadful thing, Paternalism, which 
positively inculcates that it is the duty of a 
republican government to have a kindly concern 
for the prosperity and happiness of all its people. 

"In the opinion of the Plutocrats only one cir- 

7 



98 THE COMING CLIMAX 

cumstance more horrible than this could possi- 
bly happen — and that would be for Jesus Christ 
to appear on earth and inaugurate the millen- 
nium." 

To sum up the case of ten million American 
producers, they charge the Triumphant Plutoc- 
racy with subverting popular government, and so 
prostituting the judiciary and debauching the 
law-making power, that the people can obtain 
neither judicial nor legislative protection from 
its boundless rapacity and oppression. 

In free nations the citizens range themselves 
in opposing parties. This is but the natural 
differentiation between radical and conservative 
orders of mind. Most public questions, that 
have to do with changing or reforming govern- 
mental conditions, are not self-evident proposi- 
tions in their manifest utility and wisdom. 

They can be looked at from antagonistic points 
of view, for in all human affairs the greatest 
blessings come mingled with an alloy of tempo- 
rary hardships and minor disadvantages. Thus 
when in a republic a new theory of govern- 
mental polity is advocated by the radical party, 
the conservatives at once join issue, and the 



THE COMING CLIMAX 99 

debate goes on before the grand congress of the 
whole people. In this affirmative and negative 
discussion fallacies are exposed, weak places 
are made strong, and thus the final decision at 
the ballot box registers the deliberately formed 
and intelligent judgment of the majority, to 
which all good citizens acquiesce. 

But mark you, this proposition inexorably 
presupposes that the great bulk of our people 
are honest and patriotic citizens who sincerely 
desire the good of their county. With such a 
virtuous people all mistakes in policies and 
blunders in legislation will be only of passing 
moment, for their sober second thought will 
surely rectify all errors. But given this major- 
ity of good citizens and something more is 
needed. They must have the political mechan- 
ism at hand, through which their will can be 
transmuted into the law of the land. 

The capital crime of the Triumphant Plutoc- 
racy against the American Republic is — that it 
has craftily and with criminal intent taken 
possession of the slowly organized party machin- 
ery which was built up in purer times for the 
convenience of the people in governing them- 
selves. 



100 THE COMING CLIMAX 

This mechanism has of late years had a sinis- 
ter twist given to it, and no longer obeys the 
hand of the masses for whose good it was cre- 
ated, but has come to be a malign engine that 
serves the privileged few at the expense of the 
despoiled many. 

This treasonable piece of work can be charged 
directly to the Triumphant Plutocracy. It was 
a long time doing the task, but it performed it 
with a satanic cleverness, and the work went on 
simultaneously all over the country. It needed 
no special concert of action among the men and 
corporations which make up the triumphant 
plutocracy, for its common soul of greed, which 
is present everywhere in all its parts, furnished 
the necessary impulse. Its pirate game always 
was to get something for nothing out of the 
people individually, and likewise to pillage on 
the general Government, states, counties, and 
municipalities. 

In order to do this effectively it must needs 
corrupt the official servants of the people, and 
make of them aiders, abettors and silent part- 
ners in their crimes. It bought, bribed and 
generally compromised them, until they became 
obedient. Wherever an honest officer stood 



THE COMING CLIMAX 101 

but against its blandishments he was met by 
threats, and if these failed he was ruined politi- 
cally, for no man can now be elected to office in 
defiance of the opposition of rich men and cor- 
porations. The triumphant plutocracy thus 
established a "reign of terror," and honest men 
practically vanished from American politics. 

This foe to popular government did more than 
this. It aimed a blow at the very heart of free 
institutions, by vitiating a pure suffrage. The 
buying of votes became the regular occupation 
of a certain grade of professional politicians, and 
the primary meetings were converted into the 
special forage ground of thugs, ruffians and 
desperadoes, which the respectable citizen 
shunned as he would the ante-room of Hades. 

The Triumphant Plutocracy is now absolute 
master of the democratic and republican par- 
ties, and has gained that position by its skill in 
degrading and depraving human nature. It 
shamelessly cultivates the meanest and most 
vicious inclinations of men. It runs the whole 
gamut of infamy, from bribing a sot to sell his 
vote for a drink, to buying a statesman's "soul 
of honor" with gold and high place. 

While the Triumphant Plutocracy is omnipo- 



102 THE COMING CLIMAX 

tent in the politics and government of the 
country, and dictates platforms and legislation 
at its will, it is equally supreme in the indus- 
trial, commercial and financial systems of the 
nation. It has so massed its forces into com- 
manding trusts and great corporations that the 
wealth-creators of the land are absolutely at its 
mercy. It stands at a cross-roads by which 
all producers must pass and takes account of the 
fruits of toil they bear with them, and seizes 
robber-baron-toll therefrom at its own evil 
pleasure. 

Republican freedom and a triumphant plutoc- 
racy cannot co-exist in the same nation. They 
are ever in irreconcilable antagonism, and an 
irrepressible conflict will rage between them 
until one or the other is absolutely annihilated. 
It is but our own history repeating itself; the 
essence of the coming climax is the same as that 
of our civil war, and again freedom and slavery 
are about to struggle for mastery on the Ameri- 
can continent. God grant that those of us who 
know the truth as it is, and see conditions as 
they are, can by our influence make the inevita- 
ble contest a moral one, that shall be right- 
eously determined, without the shedding of one 
drop of blood, or the falling of a single tear. 



THE COMING CLIMAX 103 

Ten million wealth-creators unite in bringing 
the foregoing general indictment agaist the tri- 
umphant plutocracy. When we say ten mil- 
lions, we mean ten millions, and are not dealing 
in any fantastical hyperbole. There are over 
five million organized farmers, and all of them, 
from the old and conservative Grange, to the 
recently formed Patrons of Industry, speak the 
same language regarding the aggressions of the 
money power. Then there are at least three 
million workers organized into Trades Unions, 
Knights of Labor, Federation of Labor and 
Federated Railway men, who voice like senti- 
ments, only in a sterner tone. It is a small 
estimate, and far within the actual number, 
when we allow two millions, for the sum total of 
the unorganized opposers of plutocracy. There 
are the artisans and other workingmen in 
thousands of towns and villages, also the small 
business men and manufacturers who have felt 
a pressure from above that is crowding them 
closer every year and have at last located the 
cause thereof. Then there are hundreds of 
thousands of well-informed, common school 
educated young men, ambitious to get on in 
the world, who when they push out into life to 



104 THE COMING CLIMAX 

make their fortunes, find that the old avenues 
to wealth and honorable careers, which lay open 
twenty-five years ago, are to-day mostly closed 
lip, appropriated, and fenced in, and are pla- 
carded with legends to the effect that "Tres- 
passers will be prosecuted according to law," 
"Private grounds, no thoroughfare here." 

Lastly among this rapidly mustering army of 
the Triumphant Plutocracy's determined oppon- 
ents, there is a host of late recruits from the great 
comfortable middle-class. These men are prac- 
ticing Christians, with whom "The Fatherhood 
of God and the Brotherhood of Man" are words 
of living meaning, they "feel another's woe," and 
cannot smile and be content under the knowl- 
edge, that millions of their lowly brothers, heirs 
with them to Heaven's immortality, are having 
their spiritual natures dwarfed and denied by 
a miserable poverty, that is a satanic fruitage of 
the evil rule of evil men. 

These middle-class protesters against pluto- 
cratic rule and ruin are patriots with whom love 
of country is not a mere matter of money inter- 
est. They rejoice in their native land and 
would see its glory ever rising. They believe 
that the republican idea in human government 



THE COMING CLIMAX 105 

is destined to survive and conquer, but they also 
know that "eternal vigilance is the price of 
liberty," and that while it is the solemn duty of 
good citizens to defend their country in time of 
danger, it is also their sacred calling to guard 
and buttress its free institutions from the assault 
of subtle foes. They know that in the prosper- 
ity of the mass of its citizens is the highest 
security of the State, and whatsoever batters 
down that tower of defence shocks the founda- 
tion of the republic. 

These sentimental middle-class patriots do 
not propose to disinherit their children of "a 
land of the free and a home for the brave" 
by a selfish and cowardly passivity when the 
foe is massing his battalions for assault. 
Therefore, when they see that the Triumph- 
ant Plutocrats are bent on driving the country 
down to perdition in their mad chase after 
gold and power, these middle-class heroes rise 
up and bar the way. 

There are only a few of them now, but their 
accession to the cause of justice and the people's 
rights shows a tendency on the part of the men 
of their class which speaks bravely for the 
future. 



106 THE COMING CLIMAX 

Now, right here, is a problem of problems for 
the solution of our comfortable, easy-going, 
contented and altogether optimistic middle- 
class. 

If there were but five million hard-handed pro- 
ducers standing at bay against the Triumphant 
Plutocracy; if there were but five million honest 
and intelligent wealth-creators who declare that 
evil conditions are being unrelentingly forced 
upon them by injustice and oppression; if there 
were but five million free American citizens 
banded together and shouting as with one voice: 
"Our prosperity is being destroyed, our liberties 
are in danger, the Triumphant Plutocracy has 
well-nigh overthrown free institutions, and 
Washington's republic is no longer ours to 
leave as a priceless heritage to coming genera- 
tions," — if five million brave, honest and intelli- 
gent men do so stand and speak on this Ameri- 
can continent, at the present hour, then does 
the circumstance constitute the most solemn 
problem that ever appealed to the people of the 
United States for righteous solution. 

Will you of the placid middle-class deny it 
without investigation? Will you ignore it 
though the proof be pushed in your very faces? 



THE COMING CLIMAX 107 

Will you scoff at the inexorable logic of these 
momentous facts? Will you shut your eyes and 
be satisfied because you no longer see the por- 
tentous direction in which this mighty stream of 
tendency is rushing? Will you preserve the set 
smile of stolid incredulity, even while the whole 
sky is aflame with lightning, and comfortably 
declare that the storm will soon blow over and 
nothing be damaged? 

This supine policy, in a time of threatening 
calamity, is a decided saver of present toil and 
trouble, but it usually turns out to be a fool's 
method of meeting an obligation that must be 
paid with compound interest in the future. The 
history of the world is full of such instances of 
national stupidity and deliberate blindness, but 
why go into the past, or visit other countries, 
when we have near at hand the most conspicu- 
ous example of national folly and punishment 
known to the chronicles of men. 

God clearly intimated to our people that the 
National sin of slavery must be put away, but 
we heeded him not. He sent us warning on 
warning that we should proceed to do the task 
and thus escape punishment, but His call was 
derided, and all the multitudinous signs and 



108 THE COMING CLIMAX 

portents of the coming day of wrath met by 
denial and indifference. So the great war burst 
upon us and the people were overwhelmed with 
amazement, as by a phenomenon at once new 
and totally unheralded. 

Again doth God cry out asking of men to do 
justice one to another. He proclaims the com- 
ing of a new dispensation that is to give fairer 
and sweeter lives to all his lowly ones. He 
asks us to put away the selfish savagery that 
now gangrenes our Christian civilization. Where 
in i860 there was one warning voice telling of 
possible woes to come, there are to-day a 
thousand. 

Shall we hearken to the prophets, and put 
brave and reverent hands to the task that now 
implores, and thus gain peace and happiness, 
or will we in sluggard disobedience do as the fool 
doeth, and suffer as the fool suffereth? Must 
God's dread scourge again fall heavily upon an 
arrogant and rebellious generation? 

The future is still ours. Let us take up the 
work while yet there is time, for no man can tell 
when the hour may strike, that terminates our 
day of grace. 



CHAPTER VI 

NEARING THE DANGER-LINE 

"There are virtuous and peaceful individuals, whose pure morality, 
quiet habits, opulence and talents fit them to be the leaders of the sur- 
rounding population. Their love of country is sincere, and they are 
ready to make the greatest sacrifices for its welfare. But civilization 
often finds them among its opponents. They confound its abuses with 
its benefits, and the idea of evil is inseparable in their minds from that 
of novelty." — [From "Democracy in America," by Alexis de Tocqueville. 

These words of the great French publicist, 
written more than fifty years ago, have a deeper 
significance for our own country to-day than 
ever before. The well-off and contented, and 
hence conservative body of citizens indicated by 
M. de Tocqueville, exists in greater numbers in 
this republic at the present time, than at any 
preceding era in our history, while no other 
nation or age of the world can show a like 
class at all comparable to it, either in aggregate 
wealth, influence or numbers. This circum- 
stance, which on the face of it would seem to 
constitute our greatest security, is our greatest 
danger, because it so happens that this huge 
and altogether comfortable middle class lies 
109 



110 THE COMING CLIMAX 

prone across the highway by which an ever- 
aspiring humanity is marching upward to a truer 
and nobler life. Their stolid inertia bars the 
way, and sullenly pushes back the gentle and 
propitiatory onflow of God's mighty evolutionary 
forces, that at first tenderly solicit man's co- 
operation in his own uplifting, but which if 
opposed at last crush down and destroy in exact 
measure with the resistance offered. 

Men are ever laggard in learning that God 
is master in His own universe, and all through 
the past scoffing generations have arrogantly 
built their Babel towers, thinking to scale the 
heavens and dispossess the Almighty One, but at 
the first breath of his wrath, their feeble crea- 
tions crumbling fell, and the outlaws knew when 
all too late that they built but for their own 
destruction. God is omnipotent. He has a 
divine plan by which men must work out their 
own salvation, while he beckons them upward to 
where his deathless angels are. He sends a 
helpful stream of tendency through their hearts 
and souls that invites them toward righteous 
ways. Woe be unto those who through cruel 
greed fight against it. Woe be unto them who 
taking their selfish ease heed not the high call, 



THE COMING CLIMAX 111 

for a withering damnation that is of this world 
shall surely be visited upon them. 

The potential American middle-class ignore 
the abuses which have crept into our industrial, 
commercial and political systems, because at 
the present time they do not interfere with their 
own particular prosperity and happiness. They 
decline to investigate as to their effect on the 
lives of millions of toiling producers, who now 
make loud complaints, and also fatuitously 
refuse to look into the near to-morrow and see 
that the persistence of these evil conditions must 
inevitably grind the present good fortune of 
themselves and their children into non-existence. 

In their swinish self-satisfaction these middle- 
class citizens have lost their patriotism, and no 
longer have a lively concern for the purity and 
stability of our republican institutions. All is 
well if the present hour finds them full-stomached 
and individually unoppressed. As to any fun- 
damental reforms for the benefit of the whole 
people, why, all reforms are novelties, and as de 
Tocqueville truly says, these men see only evil 
in them, because forsooth they might upset the 
existing status, which they are entirely satisfied 
with. 



112 THE COMING CLIMAX 

The great Amercian middle class is big and 
strong, it is rich in blood and solid in muscle. 
Its voice is public opinion and its will the law 
of the land. It is so powerful that it can do 
wrong and back it up, and if, as a logical sequel 
to injustice, danger shows head, its heavy heel 
can stamp it into the ground. But there is 
probably one force that its haughty self-suffi- 
ciency will go down before, and that is the will 
of God, which has decreed that the upward 
progress of the human race shall never be long 
delayed by the vain opposition of selfish men. 

The Triumphant Plutocracy, which has by 
craft and corruption usurped the government of 
this republic, would cease its robberies and 
aggressions to-morrow, if the middle class gave 
the word. But it will not now give that word, 
because it has sipped at the drugged cup of the 
plutocracy until its moral sensibilities are nar- 
cotized and its reason perverted. The Trium- 
phant Plutocracy is the most artful deceiver 
since Satan beguiled Adam and Eve in the 
Garden. It says to the contented middle-class: 
"You are in the same boat with us and have a 
common enemy in these millions of banded 
farmers and workingmen. They are possessed 



THE COMING CLIMAX 113 

with all sorts of radical communistic notions, and 
if they can, will completely upset the existing 
order of things. Your prosperity as well as ours 
will be swept away. These men who create all 
the wealth in the country seem bent on turning 
everything upside down, and therefore we pluto- 
crats and you of the middle class, in our abso- 
lute identity of interest, must come together and 
defend our property, law and order, and this 
perfect and altogether lovely Christian civiliza- 
tion, that is so very good to us all." 

This is the kind of devil's gospel which the 
plutocracy's newspaper, clerical and legal evan- 
gelists have been spreading abroad among the 
all too credulous middle class for years. They 
do this somewhat by open and direct announce- 
ment, but usually it is more subtly done by sly 
inference, implication and sinister hints. But 
the end sought is gained, and the middle class 
now look at the millions of organized American 
producers half in fear, half in hate. This is as 
terrible as it is profoundly and sadly true. We 
have to-day in this American Republic the awful 
spectacle of two mighty armies ranged over 
against one another in moral war. How long 
will it remain a moral war is the question that 

8 



114 THE COMING CLIMAX 

should interest every citizen whose patriotism 
is not dead and buried in cowardly selfishness. 
These are not armies of men alien to one another 
in flag and country. Oh no. They are made 
up precisely after the manner of the rival hosts 
that only a few decades ago fronted one another 
during four years of bloody war. They are men 
of a common language, a common history, a 
common country, who will inevitably have a 
common destiny, whether the same be for weal 
or for woe, whether it be for prosperity, for 
liberty, for a benign progress as free and equal 
citizens of a great republic, or whether they all 
go down together to the democracy of death, 
amid the flames of the People's day of wrath, 
while their once common country makes the 
Niagara plunge into night and chaos. 

As it was in the dead centuries so it is to-day. 
The citizens of the Roman Empire finally had a 
common fate, whether under the republic, the 
Caesars or the Tartar barbarians. The people 
of France had one fate, whether under her 
Kings, the Revolutionary Committee, the mili- 
tary despotism of Napoleon or the occupation 
of the allied monarchs. The cup of misery 
passed no class by but all drank of its bitterness 



THE COMING CLIMAX 115 

to the very dregs. There can be no victory 
through force and blood; naught can come from 
it save universal defeat and overwhelming 
destruction for all. The ultimate fate of all the 
people of all our country must be eternally one 
and the same. The philosophy of history 
affirms it, and the will of the Almighty has 
clearly so declared it. 

Dare you say that an impossible catastrophe 
is herein darkly hinted at ? then are you ignorant 
that all the actions of men first live in the 
thoughts of their minds or emotions of their 
hearts ; then do you know nothing of the imma- 
terial forces which pushed on our civil war. 
We have now pitted against one another in 
moral war, on one side about 8,000,000 banded 
farmers and other organized producers, who 
challenge the righteousness of the entire status 
quo as maintained by your oligarchy of pluto- 
cratic rulers. They bring indictment against it 
all along the line because they claim that its 
injustice impinges against their lives at every 
essential point. It wrongs them socially, politi- 
cally and financially. It invades their homes 
and denies their wives and children the comfort, 
ease and happiness which have been earned 



116 THE COMING CLIMAX 

over and again. A somber discontent broods 
in the cot of the toiler, and no hope of sure joy 
to come lifts the dismal shadow. Is this noth- 
ing, O ye comfortably circumstanced? Go down 
and suffer in that darkness and then deny its 
dread potency if you can and dare. This army 
of 8,000,000 men, who are both brawny and 
brave, have just fear lest they lose the substance 
of their republican citizenship under the rule of 
the plutocratic oligarchy. Love of liberty burns 
in their hearts and yet they see it slipping out of 
their possession. Every year they approach 
nearer the condition of political nonentities, 
and have no chance for a commanding voice in 
the govermnent of the nation, because under 
the plutocratic political machines their old time 
democratic function of being governors of the 
land in which they live has been ravished from 
them. These men feel themselves wronged by a 
hostile power in the matter of their personal inter- 
ests, and this evil influence ramifies all through 
the complexities of their social life. It limits 
their reasonable desires at every turn, and bars 
the road to pleasant enjoyments to which they 
feel themselves justly entitled. The Triumphant 
Plutocracy does this by unjustly taking of the 



THE COMING CLIMAX 117 

fruits of their toil, in many a specious and crafty 
way, through its trusts, railways, banks and 
other chartered means of brigandage. Then 
super-add to this oppression the shame and 
indignation which freemen naturally feel at 
being practically disfranchised, and you have all 
the sternest forces in the arsenal of human 
nature standing with tense muscles eager for 
defensive action. 8,000,000 strong men thus 
arrayed, and thus inspired by a common sense 
of wrong, is the most portentous fact in the his- 
tory of the republic. 

The self-seeking pretenders, who now mas- 
querade as our statesmen, may sniff at it, pluto- 
cratic newspapers may belie it, and a luxurious 
generation may close their eyes to it, but there 
it stands, grim, menacing and terrible, and will 
so stand until justice be done or a crash comes 
that shall go echoing down the ages. The 
alternative of reform or ruin is now before us. 
If we refuse the one, the other shall surely com- 
pel us. 

Ranked against these 8,000,000 are about 
3,000,000 who back up the plutocratic status 
quo, because they find pleasure and profit in it. 



118 THE COMING CLIMAX 

It numbers all those who live by the law of 
selfishness, who never consider their neighbor, 
who care nothing for moral principle, and in 
getting on in the world have no regard for the 
well-being either of the present or coming gen- 
erations, who give no thought to the future of 
the country, and acknowledge no patriotic obli- 
gations to it. If they succeed, they care not 
how many fail, and are perfectly willing to 
secure abundance for themselves at the expense 
of poverty to others. Many of these are coarse, 
beefy, unsentimental creatures, who know not 
their own vileness, while others are shrewd 
knaves with a criminal knowledge of their mean- 
ness, and still others by chance or inheritance are 
passive recipients of the benefits of plutocratic 
rule, and contribute their dead inertia to its 
defense. The other fifty odd million of people 
in the country are women, children or neutral 
tempered men who count for nothing in the 
game. 

The destinies of nations are always determined 
by the minority taht acts, and this eleven mill- 
ion is probably a larger proportion than usually 
appears in National dramas. Here we have 
them fronting one another in unrelenting antag- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 119 

onism, 8,000,000 on one side and 3,000,000 on 
the other. Issue is now squarely joined between 
them, because what one host positively affirms, 
the other as sweepingly denies. 

How long can this situation continue? Not 
long, for irresistible forces are steadily pushing 
matters to a climax. Some solution is bound to 
come, for such hostile arrays do not dissolve 
themselves leaving the issue between them 
undetermined, and a final struggle for the mas- 
tery is inevitable. Because, mark you, these 
rival forces hate one another, with a hatred 
that is deep and dangerous. There is peril in 
paltering with the truth, and this is the truth 
and should be made known to all our people, 
that by wisdom, charity and brotherly love 
wrought into deeds the threatened evil days may 
pass us by. Our national atmosphere is charged 
with moral dynamite, and any accidental shock 
may give it physical expression, We will be 
overhung by an av/ful danger until millions of 
good men and women, with reverence of God 
in their souls and the love of man in their hearts, 
set resolutely about the task of making right 
the evil things now existing in our country. 

This duty will not be a playing at work, but 



120 THE COMING CLIMAX 

involves stern toil and many sacrifices, yet it 
must be done and that at once or we shall do 
worse. It must be done even from the grossest 
selfishness, even from the mean instinct of self- 
preservation which we share with the brutes. 
But how much grander, how more like the 
children of God it is to do it, because the 
Almighty Father has clearly intimated to us that 
it is the way of righteousness, that marks the 
shining road to Heaven. It is the way of justice, 
mercy and tenderness, and leads to a peace and 
happiness that shall surely abide. 



CHAPTER VII 

PREMONITORY RUMBLINGS 

"The actual state of Society, it is useless to deny it, is a state of war, of 
active irreconcilable war on every side and in all things, and at no period 
perhaps has the great struggle, as old as the world itself, between fact and 
right, fatalism and liberty, assumed a character so deep and universal 
as at the present/' — [From Mazzini % s essay on Carlyle's French Revolu- 
tion. 

Joseph Mazzini was born a modern Italian, as 
to the flesh, but his spirit was that of a Roman 
of the time and family of Gracchus. His blood 
flowed all untainted, from the corruption which 
centuries of aristocratic despotism has injected 
into the veins of the masses of his fellow-coun- 
trymen. In 1 82 1 he took a sacred vow of 
renunciation of self, and devotion to humanity, 
and through more than fifty tragic years he kept 
it well. He was hunted out of every nation of 
Europe by the blood-hound spies of imperialism, 
but whether in exile, in prison, or on the field 
of battle, he steadfastly proclaimed the eternal 
unity of the human race. . He declared that the 
cause of all the peoples is one, and that all 
reforms in their essence must be religious 
121 



122 THE COMING CLIMAX 

reforms. Mazzini, next to Dante, was the great- 
est Italian that ever lived. His sublime soul 
could not be confined to one nation in its loving 
outreach, for his affectionate concern embraced 
a universal humanity. The generalization we 
quote was written more than forty years ago, 
and referred to forces and tendencies that were 
then working toward culmination all throughout 
the civilized world. 

The words of this seer are peculiarly applicable 
to our own country to-day. There is now a 
general feeling abroad in the land that some- 
thing momentous is to happen before long. All 
well-informed persons are aware that such is 
the case, but they shut their eyes to the terrible 
significance of the fact. They do not seem to 
recognize that this consensus of opinion is proph- 
ecy of the very highest order, and can by no 
means go unfulfilled. Either something colos- 
sally good or colossally evil must come of this to 
our country, or the atheist will have made out 
his case that there is no God, and that man's 
hope of immortality and belief in his spiritual 
nature arises from morbidity of action on the 
part of the gray matter of his brain. 

Among our people some thirty years ago there 



THE COMING CLIMAX 123 

was an epidemic of intuitive conviction as to 
great events about to happen, and it was realized 
on a scale of appalling magnitude. But the 
mystical sensing of impending catastrophe in 
i860 was faint and uncertain when compared 
with the positiveness and intensity of a like sen- 
timent that is wide spread in our country to-day. 
God gives to the brute subtle warnings of the 
approaching tornado, and his beneficence denies 
not to man timely intimation of perils that it is 
in his own power to avert. The Almighty never 
yet mocked a whole people by showing them 
a vision of inevitable doom from which there 
was no escape. This universal feeling, of half 
doubt, half fear, this wistful peering into the 
future, this vague dread of the unknown to- 
morrow is at once God's warning and His call 
to action. It bids the sluggard awake, and 
the selfish to raise eyes and look abroad among 
his fellows and see if all things are well with 
them. It tells the citizen to search his con- 
science and mark if he has done his whole duty 
to his greater family of the state. It declares 
to the Christian that his professed righteousness 
has the test of deeds before it, and challenges 
him to go forth and seek if there be work for his 



124 THE COMING CLIMAX 

hands to do among his brother-men ; and its last 
and sublimest call is, that the earthly taber- 
nacle of the Ever-living God has been neglected, 
that it has not been progressively enlarged and 
made meet and fitting for his use as the Father 
and Teacher of humanity, for what are all the 
institutions of organized society in their totality, 
the courts, legislatures, churches, halls of sci- 
ence, literatures, refining arts, usages of com- 
merce, legal codes and social customs, but parts 
of a mighty whole, which makes God's temple 
where He instructs mortals in the way of immor- 
tality? 

We sit around the hearth on a winter's even- 
ing, passing the hours in pleasant converse. A 
cry from far out in the night comes faintly 
borne. "'Tis the shout of a boisterous reveler," 
saith one. "Nay, it seemed to me like the 
scream of a man in agony," speaks another. 
"'Twas but the howl of a watch-dog complain- 
ing at his chain," saith still another, but all 
agree as to the cry, though giving it various 
interpretations. The only way these differers 
can arrive at a oneness of opinion thereon is to 
leave the warm precincts of the cheerful room 



THE COMING CLIMAX 125 

and go out into the darkness and make search 
together, but the task looks hard and dreary, 
so they do it not, but lie back taking their ease. 

Only the other night and a great cry was 
heard through all the land. The devout watch- 
ers who are always listening for God's voice 
spoke to their fellow-men and said, "The Al- 
mighty Father calls that we must at once rise 
up and work to his bidding, or a heavy woe shall 
fall upon tls," but the masses heeded not their 
urgency, and each man gave comfortable expla- 
nation of the mighty sound according to his 
mood, and mistrusted not his judgment, until he 
and all were swept away by the sudden ava- 
lanche of civil war. 

Again do all men hear a deep menacing roar 
that goes on night and day ever swelling higher 
and sterner. Let us note how the leading class 
of our people interpret it. The Triumphant 
Plutocracy, serene in the possession of gold and 
power, makes confident answer, "The demo- 
cratic lion is trying to break loose, he has been 
so coddled and pampered under the sentimental 
theory of government founded by your revolu- 
tionary fathers, that he covets every good thing 
in sight, and will trample down law, order and 



126 THE COMING CLIMAX 

the sacred rights of property in his ruthless quest 
after what he thinks ought to belong to him. 
We all know that man is a creature of progress- 
ive desires, and the more he gets the more he 
wants. In the healthful and strong govern- 
ments of Europe the lower orders are so judic- 
iously controlled that this aspiring quality has 
sharp limitations put upon it. The working peo- 
ple are taught to know their place and are made 
to keep it, they accept the station in life to 
which they were born, and all is well, for differ- 
ent orders of society hold to their own spheres 
and there is no friction between them. As 
nations approach maturity this tendency toward 
social stratifications that are sharply defined 
becomes more marked, and we see the upper 
class gradually gathering in and absorbing both 
the wealth and governing power of the country. 
Republican institutions per se offer no check to 
this inexorable law of differentiation, that goes 
hand in hand with national growth; on the con- 
trary an unqualified democracy, thoroughly per- 
meated with the old English idea of the un- 
touchable sacredness of property, offers the best 
possible field for its free working. 

"Given a republic that uses and venerates an 



THE COMING CLIMAX 12? 

imported legal system that is aristocratic in its 
essence because it gives the rights of property 
precedence over the rights of men, and supple- 
ments this by a legislative system that never 
invades the financial, industrial or commercial 
affairs of the people except to further the inter- 
ests of capital, and you have conditions that are 
positively ideal for bringing the "fittest" to the 
top in the rule of the Nation, and surely no fair- 
minded man can complain where everybody has 
an even show according to capacity and talent. 
"But the mob of working people does com- 
plain nevertheless, and fiercely resents the inev- 
itable results of a beneficent natural law. They 
will not submit gracefully to this beautiful shak- 
ing-down process whereby every man at last 
falls into his own proper place. They are all 
inoculated with that detestable Jeffersonian 
heresy which talks about the natural rights of 
man, and insists that it is the sole mission of 
democratic government to do the greatest pos- 
sible good to the greatest number of its citizens. 
They declare that if in the growth of the nation, 
new and unforeseen forces rise up, that happen 
to be hostile to the prosperity of the masses, 
they must be crushed out by the strong hand 



128 THE COMING CLIMAX 

of the law. Now we of the Triumphant Plutoc- 
racy do not believe in this sort of absurd Pater- 
nalism, and are for the continuance of a free- 
for-all order of society in which the fittest sur- 
vive. 

"We will not yield to this grumbling of the 
uneasy millions, but shall resolutely oppose all 
their radical designs. We expect they will be- 
come turbulent and break the peace, and we are 
prepared for it. The judiciary is with us both 
from sympathy and because the letter of the 
law is on our side. The machinery of the Gov- 
ernment is in our possession, the regular army 
and 100,000 national guards are at our com- 
mand, together with General Pinkerton's admir- 
able private army, which is altogether devoted 
to the preservation of law and order. This 
independent force is peculiarly suited to our 
needs, because we can order a company or regi- 
ment of these heavily armed patriots on the 
instant, which saves all tedious and undignified 
application to Sheriffs and Governors. 

"Then again these hired soldiers are cheer- 
fully obedient, and will shoot down men, women 
and children without asking why or wherefore. 
We are determined to keep the quota of this 



THE COMING CLIMAX 129 

auxiliary army full, if we have to open recruit- 
ing stations in every jail and prison in the 
country, for it is observed that the well-disci- 
plined graduates of those institutions make the 
best possible material for our use. 

"So let the coming storm growl as it pleases, 
we are ready for it." 

Friends, did you ever read much about the 
Tories during our great revolutionary war? Well, 
it is estimated that about one-third of the entire 
population of the thirteen colonies were Tories 
in 1775. The British raised loyalist regiments 
from this class, who joyously shot down their 
own neighbors in the subsequent war. These 
same Tories were stanch supporters of the crown 
and nobility, they believed in a form of govern- 
ment that gave special privileges to the few at 
the expense of the many, and scouted at the 
rebels under Washington who proposed to build 
a free nation dedicated to liberty and the natural 
rights of man. 

We stand in admiring awe before those revo- 
lutionary fathers. What daring innovators, what 
bold experimenters! They would found a 
republic, indeed, when there had been none 
9 



130 THE COMING CLIMAX 

known to the world since the almost mythical 
ones of Rome and Greece had perished nigh 
two thousand years before, for the Dutch Repub- 
lic was an oligarchy, and the Commonwealth of 
Cromwell a military despotism in masquerade. 

Let no American patriot despair of the liberties 
of his country, while the memory of those glori- 
fied iconoclasts of the Revolution is cherished in 
the hearts of our great plain people. They gave 
us a shining example of the blessings that can 
come through a fearless tearing down of evil 
institutions which bar the way to man's right- 
eous ownership of himself. 

Washington and the Fathers broke down the 
legal ramparts that defended chartered wrongs, 
and this generation of Americans may be called 
upon to do the same if they would save the 
republic. 

Our Tory fellow-subjects of revolutionary 
times not only believed in and loved the rule of 
good King George the Third of blessed memory, 
together with all the aristocratic appurtenances 
thereunto belonging, but what was even more 
important, they had firm faith that the rebels 
would be crushed into the earth, and looked for- 
ward with pleasant expectancy to seeing Wash- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 131 

ington and scores of other patriot leaders hung, 
drawn and quartered as traitors. 

Every one of the present Plutocracy's mathe- 
maticians, who are now busily figuring out the 
future of our country by the atheistic arithmetic 
of cause and effect, which takes no account of 
God's inexorable divisor that always finally 
declares itself in human calculations, would to- 
day avow that those dead-and-gone Tories did 
the sum according to the right rule, and it was 
amazing that the outcome did not agree with 
their correct ciphering. 

Those long-vanished tories very much resem- 
bled people who are now living among us, and 
dearly love to be on the winning side. They liked 
to lean up against the obvious and self-assertive 
strength that goes with power and gold. With 
Boston, New York and Philadelphia garrisoned 
by Britain's red-coated battalions, while her 
mighty fleet went thundering up and down the 
coast, it was pitifully absurd for the half-armed 
and undisciplined herd of squalid rebels skulking 
in the forest fastnesses to even dream of liberty 
and independence. Yes, it was quite as ridicu- 
lous as for the great plain people of America to 
now expect that they can prevail over the Tri- 



132 THE COMING CLIMAX 

umphant Plutocracy in the inevitable contest 
which is coming nearer and nearer every day. 

After Yorktown, when the humbled Britons 
sailed for home, a large contingent of the more 
prominent tories went with them, while the 
lesser ones who remained were glad to purchase 
toleration by silence and abject acquiescence to 
the new conditions. For long years thereafter 
every community had its families of tories, who 
were the objects of popular scorn, but at last 
the immediate actors in the revolutionary drama 
grew old and died off, and the sharp personal 
animosity against the hated tory was buried in 
the grave. But the principle of toryism was 
by no means dead, for it has survived unto this 
day, and is at last victorious in the land where it 
was once laid so low. We now call it the Tri- 
umphant Plutocracy, and it believes in special 
privileges which give precedence to interests of 
the rich and aristocratic few, over the rights of 
the poor and humble many. It dislikes free 
institutions, and would gladly see a government 
of the people, by the people and for the people, 
vanish from the American continent. If this is 
not toryism of the regulation 1776 brand, then 
we don't know what is. That serpent was 



THE COMING CLIMAX 133 

scotched but not killed by the Revolutionary 
War. It went into a comatose state immediately 
after that event, but it was warmed into life as 
the self-banished tories came sneaking back 
from Canada and England, after time had some- 
what cooled the wrath of the successful rebels. 
When de Tocqueville was here more than fifty 
years ago he met rich American citizens who 
frankly avowed their dislike of republican insti- 
tutions. These tories have increased of late 
years in exact proportion with the growth of a 
distinctively wealthy class among us, who in 
point of fact have absolutely nothing in common 
with the millions of our ordinary every-day cit- 
izens. These rich aristocrats travel in Europe, 
visit courts and are entertained by the nobility, 
and come to have a warm admiration for an 
order of society that is rigidly classified, and 
where the vulgar herd are governed but do not 
govern. 

We venture to say that if the United States 
were raked over as with a fine-toothed comb, it 
would be impossible to find a single millionaire 
who in his heart of hearts really loves the good 
old Jeffersonian democratic style of running a 
government. He would like a republic, oh yes, 



134 THE COMING CLIMAX 

but it must be after the old Venetian order, 
where an oligarchy of rich aristocrats hold rule 
and all the rest of the people obey, or mayhap 
he would prefer one like that precious specimen 
on our Southern border, that is under the 
supreme command of the most absolute military 
dictator since Napoleon Bonaparte. And oh, 
how our capitalists do admire the Republic of 
Mexico, and how they do glorify President Diaz, 
a president, forsooth, who changes the constitu- 
tion of the country as he does his palace guards, 
viz., by his personal order. 

Please mark what a Boston Yankee, who is 
publishing a financial journal in the City of 
Mexico, writes concerning General Diaz, Presi- 
dent of the Mexican Republic by his own indi- 
vidual vote: "We frankly declare that we have 
no sentimental preference for republican institu- 
tions, because the form of government suited to 
one country may be entirely unfit for another 
All men, except rogues, like direct, forceful, ener- 
getic governing, and men who know how to 
govern are in all nations the rarest sort of men. 
Most fortunate in this age of universal talking 
and parliamentary gabble is that country which 
has at its head a man of action, guided by the 



The coming climax 135 

inspiration of patriotism and a lofty ambition." 
This New Englander publishes his paper in 
the interests of American capitalists, all of 
whom "have no sentimental preference for 
republican institutions," and would gladly see 
the United States made over on the Diaz plan 
to-morrow. But gentlemen, when you start in 
on that game of imperialization, it will be well 
for you to remember that you are not dealing 
with a mass of ignorant and brutalized peons, 
but with millions of intelligent, liberty-loving 
American citizens, who have formed the habit 
of being free, and are not by any means liable to 
have their freedom taken away without striking 
a tolerably brave blow in its defense. 

And still the hoarse murmur as of myriads of 
complaining voices swells higher and higher, and 
comes ever nearer, an ominous rumbling, as of 
fate's chariot, heavy-laden with dread destinies, 
and our comfortable five millions grow querulous 
that the noise invades their banqueting halls. 
They batten the windows and pull down the 
heavy curtains, but decline to go forth and see 
what it is all about. "Something is going to hap- 
pen, very true, but when it comes to pass we 
will be informed regarding it, so why bother now ?" 



136 THE COMING CLIMAX 

And the beautiful night came gently down 
over Babylon, and the great city delighted itself 
with music and feasting. There were strange 
lights on the far horizon-line, but none noted 
them save the gloomy seers, and these called 
them the watch-fires of the invading army of 
the great Cyrus, but no man heeded their words. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE INERTIA OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 

"Can it be believed that the democracy, which has overthrown the 
feudal system, and vanquished kings, will retreat before tradesmen and 
capitalists?" — [From "Democracy in America" by Alexis de Tocqueville. 

The modern democratic movement had its rise 
some centuries ago among the countries lying 
along the Rhine. Its springs were in those free 
cities, which through manufacture and trade had 
become so rich and strong, that they either 
bought or compelled a measure of civil rights 
from the robber lords. Thus free institutions 
slowly grew under the fostering care of com- 
merce, and the individual freedom of the trafficker 
gradually expanded into political liberty for the 
State. But the mission of commerce as an 
equalizer of rights and privileges throughout the 
whole body of citizens is over. It has rounded 
its cycle as a constructive force in the building 
of higher civilizations, for it has not the soul 
requisite for the tasks which now lie before an 
s 137 



138 THE COMING CLIMAX 

ever-aspiring humanity. Desire for gain is its 
primary impelling motive, and the many and 
magnificent benefits which commerce has con- 
ferred upon mankind were necessary and inci- 
dental to the satisfaction of its ruling passion. 
So now in this country and in these later 
days, it has come to pass that commerce, under 
which term we shall also include the financial 
and transportation systems, together with the 
great manufacturing industries, because they are 
all mutually inter-dependent, and are welded 
into unity by an indestructible solidarity of 
interest, has flung its heavily armed battalions 
across the line of march by which our American 
common people are moving toward a larger 
prosperity, a higher plateau of equality and a 
more perfect liberty than they ever knew before. 
This is a legitamate quest on the part of a peo- 
ple, for it is God's inspiration pushing humanity 
onward and upward made manifest. Whoso- 
ever acknowledges God in the universe, and 
accepts the fact that he has ordained a law of 
progress for man, must brand as heretics and 
outlaws all those who would erect barriers 
against the beneficent onflow of this divine 
stream. And this is precisely what our Ameri- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 139 

can oligarchy of commercial magnates are doing 
to-day. They serve greed rather than God, and 
would put the common people back as they were 
under feudalism. Commercialism has rounded 
its circle and has not only returned to where it 
started from, but has taken the place of the rob- 
ber-baron that it overthrew. Modern invention 
has given to commercialism the power to take 
with ease all that belongs to it by right, and also 
allows it by the mere stretching forth of its Bri- 
arean hands to take that which of right belongs 
to others. It now occupies the position of abso- 
lute dictator to the working producer, and can 
autocratically state what his share shall be of 
the fruits of his own toil. This relation was 
quite natural with the mailed knight on one 
side and the naked serf on the other, but it can- 
not long endure in a republic where the working 
masses are intelligent and brave, without a de- 
cisive trial of strength between the opposing 
forces. 

The stream of democratic tendency has 
swelled mightily of late years. It gathers mo- 
mentum constantly and is always increasing in 
volume. It is like a great river that flows on 
with sweet placidity towards its ultimate destiny 



140 THE COMING CLIMAX 

so long as the banks are wide and obstructions 
are unknown, but let it meet obstacles or be 
forced into a narrow channel — how it roars and 
thunders in fierce complaint, and mark you, 
whatsoever is in the way is swept aside or sub- 
merged, for the flood is irresistible and nothing 
can stop it. 

The Triumphant Plutocracy was soon aware 
of the growlings of the American democratic lion, 
because it had a guilty knowledge of his com- 
plaints, and knew that any change in the political 
status that came about through the workers' dis- 
satisfaction was certain to be to the disadvantage 
of the Plutocracy. Hence it was early on guard, 
and prepared for defensive action. But our 
comfortable and contented middle class were 
the last to hear the hubbub, and even when the 
clamor forcibly possessed their ears, were singu- 
larly laggard in searching out the cause thereof. 
They were not concious of having wronged any 
one. They had not stolen any railways. They 
had not robbed the peopleof hundreds of millions 
of acres of land. They had not by collusion with 
corrupt government officials converted the finan- 
cial system of the country into a machine for 
robbing the producers. They were not using 



THE COMING CLIMAX 141 

all of the means of transportation to tax the 
farmers more than the traffic would bear. They 
were not pooling millions into great trusts that 
controlled all the necessaries of life, and thus 
established monopolies more infamous than those 
granted by Charles the Second. They did not 
maintain lobbies at the several State legislatures 
and at Washington in order to buy the style of 
legislation they wanted. They did not pack the 
judiciary with conscienceless attorneys who 
handed down decisions as their masters ordered. 
They neither imported ignorant Huns, Slavs nor 
Poles to work in their mines, nor did they hire 
Pinkerton thugs to shoot them down when they 
opened their eyes to the fact that they were 
being swindled and outraged. So why bring 
us into this row, quoth the well-off middle class, 
who are reserved for the honor of being eaten 
up last by the cannibal plutocracy. All these 
good people want is peace and quiet; they are 
reasonably well satisfied with present conditions 
and do not fret themselves by peering too deep 
into the coming to-morrows. 

Our middle class, like those of all other nations, 
is in the habit of looking up to wealthier social 
superiors, rather than down to the classes who 



142 THE COMING CLIMAX 

are inferior to themselves in worldly circum- 
stances. "The simple annals of the poor" are 
not read to any large extent, unless such men as 
Dickens do the writing of them. Moreover, our 
middle class is ambitious, this quality is in our 
American air, they would like to read their 
names inscribed in the golden book reserved for 
the undeniable aristocrats, and who should say 
them nay, when in less than a generation they 
have seen a man who started in with a patent 
mouse-trap, capture a quarter of the railways in 
the country, half the coal mines and $150,000,- 
000, and another go from behind the counter of 
a country store, to be dictator of the oil produc- 
tion of the world and gather in $129,000,000, 
and still another begin life ditching on the rail- 
way, and retire with scores of millions and a 
son-in-law prince, while more than three thous- 
and men have become millionaires during that 
time. 

These facts make the fiction of "Aladdin and 
his wonderful lamp" seem quite common-place, 
and warrant every middle class American in 
hoping for a shake-up of destiny's dice-box, that 
shall land him inside the plutocratic paradise. 



THE COMING CLIMAX 143 

The newspapers through which the middle 
class get their information have either ignored 
or misrepresented the formidable banding 
together of American producers which has long 
been going on in our land. And now when 
8,000,000 intelligent and free-souled toilers 
stand distrustful and indignant, not against the 
republic, because they are devoted to the demo- 
cratic idea in human government, but against a 
Triumphant Plutocracy which they regard as a 
usurper in wrongful possession of Washington's 
republic, these newspapers suppress the exact 
truth of the great movement and through false 
or misleading statements prejudice their confid- 
ing middle-class readers against it. Once these 
same journals were the staunch advocates of 
human progress, but they are so no more. This 
change in the organs of news and opinion read 
by the middle class has been so slow and subtle, 
that most of them did not remark it, and so have 
adjusted their beliefs to it, as the readers of Rev. 
Alexander Campbell's publication did not realize 
that they were out of the Baptist denomination, 
until that clerical gentleman's argument had 
borne them unconsciously into the fold of his 
new sect. So there are to-day readers who 



144 THE COMING CLIMAX 

delighted in the New York "Tribune" when edited 
by Horace Greeley, that glorious champion of 
popular rights, who still swear by it now that it 
has become as aristocratic and reactionary as 
the London "Times," 

What is true of the New York "Tribune" is like- 
wise true of all the old rich and influential party 
papers, republican and democratic alike. With- 
out exception they are in league with the Tri- 
umphant Plutocracy, and will defend its iniqui- 
tous privileges to the last gasp. These rich 
journals are primarily run as money-making 
enterprises, and the solid cash is on the side of 
the plutocracy every time. In fact these wealthy 
newspapers are part and parcel of the Triumph- 
ant Plutocracy, and hence it is not singular that 
they should be its champions. The bulk of the 
middle-class men read the same journals that 
their fathers did before them. They give these 
credence, and honor their opinions, because they 
have been in the habit of so doing from boy- 
hood. Man is such a creature of custom and 
so slow to change convictions once settled, that 
it is not singular that these newspapers wield 
the tremendous influence they do. It would be 
wrong to impute deliberate dishonesty to the 



THE COMING CLIMAX 145 

majority of these journals, because it would be 
untrue. The present Emperor William has not 
a shadow of a doubt as to his divine right to rule 
Germany precisely as he pleases. Our American 
slaveholders did not as a class violate their sense 
of moral rectitude by holding men in bondage. 
Nothing is easier than for the beneficiaries of an 
evil system to be entirely honest in upholding 
it. We dare say that Jay Gould and Rocke- 
feller consider themselves very proper persons, 
and are, if we accept their postulate that a civ- 
lization built on the "devil-take-the-hindmost" 
plan is the best possible order of society for 
humanity. So, considering the general infirmity 
of our weak human nature, we are ready to make 
excuses for these newspapers that are so hot in 
defending the Triumphant Plutocracy. This 
present array of 8,000.000 banded producers has 
been of slow growth; and it has from the first 
been the jounalistic habit to make light of it, 
and decline to give it any abiding importance as 
a factor either in the commercial or political 
affairs of the country. Then again it is a new 
thing under the sun in our republic, and there 
is no ready-made rule by which to give it classi- 
fication, so it is just as well to keep on belittling 



146 THE COMING CLIMAX 

it ; and perhaps by continually predicting that 
this mighty host of indignant toilers will soon 
harmlessly disband itself, that much-desired end 
may come about. This comfortable theory has 
been accepted so long by our great middle class, 
that they do not appreciate the terrible gravity 
of the situation ; and because matters are now 
moving along with reasonable smoothness, they 
decline to follow out the inevitable trend of 
events toward an ultimate Niagara-plunge. The 
middle class has great confidence in the Tri- 
umphant Plutocracy, for the reason that it is so 
rich and strong, so self-assertive, confident and 
masterful. It has positive plans for its own 
protection and easily tramples down whatsoever 
gets in its way, and morever, whether right or 
wrong, it is the tenant in possession of our 
political, commercial and financial systems. It 
is heavily armed, courageous and aggressive, 
and any force that ousts it from its present hold- 
ings must needs be powerful. Then again, the 
middle-class people feel that any danger com- 
ing to themselves by way of the Triumphant 
Plutocracy is remote and contingent. It must 
proceed along the present line of invasion by 
which the leagued millionares are gathering in 



THE COMING CLIMAX 147 

the wealth of the country. This process is a 
gradual one, and has no sudden shocks of terror 
about it, and the chance is always open for the 
wise middle-man to shrewdly look out for num- 
ber one, and align himself with the invaders and 
thus secure a comfortable share of the plunder. 
All wise men know that the persistence of the 
present plutocratic regime means nothing less 
than the absolute extinction of our great middle 
class, but no individual member of that body, 
even if he concedes the soundness of the general 
proposition, feels that the threat has any mean- 
ing for himself personally, Oh no, for he has full 
confidence in his own wit, tact and forethought, 
and will so look out for himself as to get on the 
winning side betimes. The plutocracy drag-net 
will probably catch his neighbor, but that afflic- 
tion he will strive to bear up against with true 
Christian resignation. 

At the present time our middle class offers no 
massed opposition against the plutocracy inva- 
sion; on the contrary it serves as a movable 
breastwork that is pushed ahead, as the Tri- 
umphant Plutocracy advances all along the line 
on the producers. The middle class cannot fail 



148 THE COMING CLIMAX 

to know that there must be peril to them in the 
recent demonstration of the power of organized 
capital to absorb the wealth annually created in 
the country. They are aware that it takes a 
larger proportion of it every year, and where is 
this tendency to end? They know the Tri- 
umphant Plutocracy will never stop voluntarily 
because its greed is appeased, for its lust is 
insatiable, and it will crowd its advantages to 
the uttermost, even to the degradation of the 
masses, the overthrow of republican institu- 
tions, and the destruction of Christian civiliza- 
tion. And yet the middle class nestle on the 
bosom of the Triumphant Plutocracy, because 
they think they can do no better; there at least 
is present peace and security from radical 
changes that may bring they know not what. 
They are soothed to rest by sinister lullabies, 
and cower like a frightened child when their 
grim guardian whispers of an unchained democ- 
racy, with anarchy, communism, socialism, and 
all sorts of phantasmic horrors. Thus in this 
time of high crisis, when God,s call to righteous 
action sounds throughout the land, the middle 
class remain passive, and in so doing throw the 
dead weight of their numbers on the side of the 
Triumphant Plutocracy, 



CHAPTER IX 

NATION-BUILDERS AND NATION-SAVERS 

"What constitutes a state? Men, high-minded men; 

Men who their duties know, 
But know their rights, and knowing dare maintain; 

Prevent the long-aimed blow 
And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain; 

These constitute a state." 

— Sir William Jones. 

Political economists and students of the sci- 
ence of government are wont to apply the same 
general rules to the consideration of all prob- 
lems which have a near concern with the progress 
or retrogression of organized society. In the 
case of the social and economic revolution now 
going on in our republic, they must, if they 
would study it aright, make an immense allow- 
ance for that potency which is born of the spirit 
of our democratic institutions. The data of the 
European uprising of labor will need large quali- 
fication before they can be applied here, because 
the United States of America is the only country 
in the history of the world where the demo- 

149 



150 THE COMING CLIMAX 

cratic idea has had a chance for full and free 
expression. 

But in this instance the investigator need 
waste but little time in noting the effect of 
republican institutions upon the very rich, for 
the wealthy class are pretty much the same in 
all nations, and are usually well able to take 
care of their interests under any form of govern- 
ment. Political institutions are to them a mat- 
ter of secondary importance, so long as their 
property and avenues of income are protected, 
and they are held secure in the enjoyment of 
the power and pleasure that go with riches. 
We have in this republic at the present time a 
more numerous class of wealthy persons than 
can be shown by any other nation on the face of 
the globe. The mere fact of the possession of 
riches makes a strong bond between them, 
and this is now powerfully supplemented by a 
common sentiment of fear lest the sources of 
their rapidly accumulating fortunes be cut off 
by legislation that is radically democratic in 
character; hence the American plutocratic aris- 
tocracy is probably more thoroughly segregated 
from the great body of their fellow country- 
men, than is the nobility of England. Instead 



THE COMING CLIMAX 151 

of having any kindly community of feeling with 
the lower millions, they regard them as danger- 
ous foes, and would rob them of all power in the 
government. 

If you seek among this wealthy caste the fair 
and consumate flowers of republican patriot- 
ism,"* lo, you shall find them not ; for is it rea- 
sonable to suppose that a class concerned above 
all things for its wealth should fervently love 
democratic institutions, that place the govern- 
ment of the country in the hands of the mass of 
citizens who are always in humble circumstances? 
It is a self-evident proposition, that as rich 
caste would not be loyal in heart to a free con- 
stitution that provides for a government of the 
people, by the people and for the people, and 
our Triumphant Plutocracy has already made 
clear demonstration of its feelings toward the 
republic by striving to overturn it in fact while 
respecting it in form. 

Broadly and truthfully stated, our American 
democracy is to-day threatened by precisely the 
same toryism which so bitterly opposed the 
freedom of the colonies of 1 16 years ago. There 
is not an iota of difference in the animus of 
these two widely separated incarnations of the 



152 THE COMING CLIMAX 

same evil principle, for both of them stand for 
the privileges of the classes as against the rights 
of the masses. So we can dismiss our Trium- 
phant Plutocracy as being a legitimate out- 
growth of republican institutions, for it belongs 
to monarchy and feudalism, and has no valid 
part or lot in a government built on the affirma- 
tions of the Declaration of Independence. 

The American republic was founded by two 
fraternal classes working harmoniously to a 
common end. One was made up from the large 
landed proprietors, professional and commercial 
men, and the other from the distinctively farm- 
ing class, together with mechanics, small shop- 
keepers and other workers. The prosperous and 
cultured first class named were sentimentalists 
and highly gifted with political imagination, they 
were God's builders and world-betterers who 
are providentially sent to earth when His mighty 
epochal tasks are to be done. Of these divinely 
guided beings were Washington, Jefferson, Paine, 
Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Frank- 
lin, Charles Carroll and our other glorified re- 
publican saints, who hazarded property and life 
in their free-will devotion to liberty and justice. 



THE COMING CLIMAX 153 

The beautiful unselfishness of these grand men 
was even more sublime than their heroism. 
Our internal trade amounted to but little at 
that time, because since the settlement of the 
country, England had pursued the greedy policy 
of discouraging and as far as possible prevent- 
ing the manufacture of all articles which her 
merchants had in stock for export. Hence all 
the well-off patriots of the northern colonies 
were either directly or indirectly interested in 
maritime commerce, and the sale of American 
raw materials abroad, while the rich patriots of 
the southern colonies, and especially in Virginia, 
drew their incomes from tide-water plantations 
whose product was sold almost exclusively in 
London. Therefore rebellion against the mother- 
country meant for them an instant cutting off of 
long-accustomed luxuries, many comforts and 
the source of supply for ready cash. In addi- 
tion to this surrender of material good things, 
they exposed themselves to death at the heads- 
man's block as traitors, for the suppression of 
the Scotch outbreak of 1745 taught them the 
kind of bloody justice England gives to defeated 
rebels. 

It was no empty jingle of words when the 



154 THE COMING CLIMAX 

revolutionary fathers pledged their lives, their 
fortunes and their sacred honor in defense of 
the young republic. Every one of these self- 
sacrificing leaders who so nobly broke the way 
for a higher civilization, could have aligned him- 
self on the side of English rule, and gained there- 
by wealth and distinguished position. They 
could have been sharers in the profit which came 
of England's oppression. It need never have 
touched them, for all of its exactions would have 
fallen at last on the working masses, precisely as 
such exactions do to-day under the reign of our 
Triumphant Plutocracy. 

But no, these divinely inspired men would 
not sell principle for pelf, but stood ready to 
give "the last full measure of devotion" to a 
cause that championed the natural rights of 
man. Now that all that is best in the life of 
the republic, for which they were willing to lay 
down their lives, is threatened, where are the 
citizens of the same comfortably circumstanced 
class to which they belonged? Do they spring 
forth in defense like true patriots, prompt to 
leave behind them ease, property and life itself 
if need be, in order to save the republic which 
Washington and the fathers "dedicated to the 



THE COMING CLIMAX 155 

sublime idea that all men are created free and 
equal." Alas no, they do not move; for the 
sneering phraseology of Plutocratic Toryism, 
which Carlyle truly calls "devil language," has 
not only got on to their tongues, but its blight- 
ing mildew has invaded their once free souls 
and they can no longer think thoughts that are 
of liberty. It is quite the fashion now-a-days 
among the plutocratic tories to scoff openly at 
Mr. Thomas Jefferson and his exalted teachings. 
A few years ago and they only whispered their 
hatred in secret, but now they have bolder grown 
and because their invasion of the republic has not 
been resisted, flatter themselves that the virus 
of a universal greed has rotted democratic sen- 
timent down to a point where the people would 
give up free institutions rather than miss a 
chance of making a dollar. 

And sad to say the plutocratic tories have 
full warrant for this belief. 

A few weeks since and the leading daily 
newspaper of the Mississippi valley came squarely 
out and specifically denied the validity of the 
democratic proposition upon which our republic 
was founded. It did not skulk behind vague 
generalities, but audaciously assailed Thomas 



156 THE COMING CLIMAX 

Jefferson and the immortal principles with which 
his name will be associated so long as the word 
freedom has meaning in the minds of men. A 
journal doing the same thing forty years ago 
would have lost ninety-nine per cent of its cir- 
culation in a week, but we have not heard that 
the newspaper in question has gone into bank- 
ruptcy. 

This is an infallible sign of peril in the air, and 
indicates that the inevitable shock of battle 
between Plutocratic Toryism on one side, and 
American Patriotism on the other is coming 
dangerously near. But, thank God, it is not yet 
too late for the comfortable middle class to 
join hands with the working producers and thus 
accomplish the salvation of the country. They 
have been juggled by the plutocratic tories into 
accepting the cunningly preserved mummy of 
free institutions, for the old-time living reality, 
and unless their eyes are promptly opened to 
the deception that has been practiced on them 
it will soon be impossible to avert the impend- 
ing catastrophe. Let us hope that the middle 
class will soon come forth from their trance and 
do deeds worthy of their fathers. 



THE COMING CLIMAX 157 

While the easy-circumstanced class, that took 
the daring initiative for liberty and independence 
at the time of our revolutionary war, has grown 
lax in its patriotism, and by reason of an exclu- 
sive devotion to pecuniary interests is no longer 
vigilant as to the well-being of the country, the 
second great class which did the heavy work and 
hard fighting that made the revolted colonies a 
free nation, viz., the farmers, mechanics and 
workingmen, are as fervidly loyal to the dfemo- 
cratic idea that underlies our American Republic 
as were their long-vanished brothers who laid 
down their lives for it at Bunker Hill, Saratoga 
and King's Mountain. And forsooth, why 
should they not be? We do not announce the 
fact as something odd or strange ; quite the con- 
trary, for it is of the natural order of things that 
the typical man of the great plain people should 
give all the love of his heart and faith of his 
soul to institutions, that secure him in the own- 
ership of himself. The quest for liberty and self- 
government on the part of the toiler of the uni- 
versal race has been long and weary. Since the 
first slave raised his bowed head and caught a 
sudden inspiration from God's free sunlight, free 
air, and glad songs of free birds, that he also of 



158 THE COMING CLIMAX 

right was free, many a tragic century has passed, 
but the vision of liberty that flashed in upon the 
soul of that unknown bondsman, far back in 
the night of time, was an undying revelation, for 
all climes and every succeeding age. It spread 
among the lowly as an unquenchable flame, 
because it was lighted by God's eternal truth, 
that once given to man works on until its 
divinely predestined mission be wrought out to 
the uttermost. Grecian Helots saw the celes- 
tial light, and facing their masters' swords, 
bravely died. Under it, Spartacus led forth his 
doomed gladiators defiant of the Roman legions 
and the awful crucifixion. German peasants 
and English churls at intervals of ages looked 
on the radiant picture of the fairer days to be, 
and gave their life-blood in very joy of it. 
When God breathed the democratic idea into 
the consciousness of his earthly children, it be- 
came a part of the immortal heritage of the 
race, and immediately began its task as the 
primar)' force in the spiritual uplifting of human- 
ity. This supernal potency is destined to be- 
come at last the supreme Emancipator that 
shall free the individual man from all tyranny 
of his fellows, and thus remove every barrier 



THE COMING CLIMAX 159 

between himself and heaven, save those which 
his own perverted will may erect. The unre- 
stricted working of the democratic idea would 
bring the largest measure of moral education, 
so that man, finally standing forth in the uni- 
verse altogether enlightened and truly a free 
agent, could be rightly left by the Almighty to 
his own free choice as to his own eternal destiny. 
But man cannot be a free moral agent, and lord 
of his spiritual self, as God plainly designed, 
while Kings, Aristocracies and Triumphant Plu- 
tocracies keep him as an imbruted serf, so that 
they can rob him with ease, while harrowing up 
all the dark passions of his soul by their injustice 
which denies him the rightful ownership of him- 
self. Any system of religion which affirms that 
there is a free salvation for man under these 
conditions is not only heretical but is guilty of 
sacrilege in calling Jesus Christ Master. 

The democratic idea is liberty for man formu- 
lated into a theory of government, and there is 
an element in it which defies the analytical 
scalpel of the materialistic philosopher. This is 
its spiritual quality and life-principle. It is an 
emanation from the Deity, and impels man to 
deal justly with his fellows. Its extension 



160 THE COMING CLIMAX 

among masses of men makes the ideal republi- 
can commonwealth. Truly a most significant 
term is "Commonwealth" when reduced to its 
literal meaning, and it may come to pass, in 
some distant age, that he who first applied it to 
the state builded wiser than he knew. 

As some animals, moved by a subtle instinct, 
cross mountains and rivers and at last find the 
habitat best suited to their development, so do 
the lowly of all the progressive* races yearn 
after and seek the democratic idea embodied in 
government. 

More than two hundred years ago the humble 
men of Europe felt prophetically that the Amer- 
ican continent was set apart for divine uses, and 
eagerly sought its shores. The common men of the 
common people, how fearlessly they fought and 
how proudly they died that the young republic 
might live ! And why should they not, when it real- 
ized the uttermost of their hopes for themselves 
and their children? It was the dream that had 
haunted uncounted generations of the oppressed, 
become a living fact — a nation consecrated to lib- 
erty, equal rights, and man's inalienable owner- 
ship of himself. What more could the lowly ones 
of earth desire? They asked for no more, and 



THE COMING CLIMAX 161 

were content. And as it was in the old revolu- 
tionary days, so is it now, and eight million 
banded toilers are to-day organized for the pri- 
mary purpose of preserving this continent to 
a republic that shall continue to be as the 
fathers design it, a government that is truly 
of the people, by the people and for the people. 
And yet these simple-hearted nation-savers, 
these men of steadfast loyalty to the republic, 
who have sealed their faith by their blood, when- 
ever their country demanded the sacrifice, are 
now branded as revolutionists and workers of 
anarchy ! Could there be anything more mon- 
strous than this accusation? Here are men to 
whom a pure democratic government offers 
everything they desire, personal liberty, just 
and equal laws, a voice in ruling the country, 
opportunities for education, a chance to accu- 
mulate property and build up comfortable 
homes, and lo and behold these same men who 
live by the toil of their hands and whose labor 
has created the wealth that now makes ours 
the richest of nations, are charged with hostile 
intent toward Washington's republic, and 
pointed out as the enemies of law and order, 
peace and justice. It has usually been held 



162 THE COMING CLIMAX 

that the humble ones of earth, who only wanted 
that which they fairly earned, found in a repub- 
lic, ruled by equal laws, their ideal state; and 
verily it is so, for no man becomes an enemy to 
democratic institutions, until their limitations 
stand in the way of his lawless ambition. 
When he would make prey of his weaker fellows, 
take away their liberties and hold them as his 
serfs, then no matter what lies his lips may 
mumble, he scoffs at the democratic idea and 
tramples it under foot. With satanic duplicity 
our Triumphant Plutocracy is blatant in its 
protestations of love for the starry flag of our 
republic. It pretends loyal devotion to the free 
institutions that it symbolizes, and professes loud 
admiration for a government of the people, by 
the people and for the people. And all this time 
the Triumphant Plutocracy is tearing down the 
republic far more rapidly than it was built up. 
It has invaded every one of its sacred places 
and poluted them. It has undermined the eter- 
nal moralities which must be the solid foundation 
of a democracy, and it now holds profane riot in 
our temple of liberty, from which the tutelary 
deities of the republic have fled in horror. And 
yet these plutocratic Imperialists, these aristo- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 163 

cratic anarchists, with a demoniac jeer brazenly 
charge the great plain people of America, who 
are striving to save the republic, with their own 
criminal intention for its destruction! Could 
the audacity of devils go any farther than this ? 



CHAPTER X 

THE AMERICAN PRODUCER STANDS AT BAY 

"A great nation does but mock Heaven and its power by pretending 
belief in a revelation which asserts the love of money to be the root of 
all evil, and declaring at the same time that it is actuated, and intends to 
be actuated in all chief national deeds and measures, by no other love.' — 
\Ruskin. 

The mechanism by which the democratic 
idea is given expression in government must be 
sadly out of gear, when 8,000,000 of the most 
valuable citizens of the republic — that is to say, 
the wealth-creators, the producers of value by 
hard work, are driven to band themselves to- 
gether for mutual protection, This circum- 
stance proves conclusively that the governing 
power of the Nation has during long years been 
guilty of criminal laches, in that it has studiously 
ignored the ever-growing complaints of the larg- 
est and most important body of its citizens. 
This state of facts would be impossible under a 
true republic, hence ours to-day is but a base 
counterfeit and false semblance of the righteous 
reality that once it was. 
164 



THE COMING CLIMAX 165 

Mr, Cultured American of independent fortune, 
we would like a few words with you — that is, if 
you have a spark of Washingtonian patrotism 
in your breast, aught of love for humanity in 
your heart, or mind enough to follow causes to 
their logical effects. If you lack in these partic- 
ulars we might as well shout our argument into 
the ear of the Egyptian Sphynx. 

Twenty-five years ago organized labor in 
America was practically confined to a few thous- 
and New England shoemakers and factory 
operatives. To-day it numbers 8,000,000 
workers and is co-extensive with the Nation. It 
has spread over every state in the Union, and 
embraces every class of productive toilers with- 
out exception. All the manual trades, the car- 
penters, the iron-workers, the cabinet-makers, 
the tailors, the coal-miners, the printers, the 
railway-men, the hod-carriers, the brick-layers, 
the stone-masons, the plumbers, the street-car- 
drivers, telegraph operators, waiters, grocery 
clerks, in fact all kinds of labor that either gives 
value to raw material or usefulness to the varied 
appliances of civilization, are all included in the 
list of organized toilers, and lastly come the farm- 
ers, the great foundation-class of the republic, 



166 THE COMING CLIMAX 

marching in solid column five million strong and 
more. This is the most stupendous event in 
the industrial history of the world, and has a 
social and political significance for our country 
that is momentous beyond all power of exag- 
geration. Persons sufficently interested in the 
general subject of this book to have read it up 
to this chapter would have their intelligence 
insulted were we argumentatively to answer the 
insensate chatter of the silly fools, who can only 
see in this mighty labor movement the work of 
restless agitators, or a temporary attack of gen- 
eral cussedness on the part of millions of pro- 
ducers. Men of sense cannot give this grave 
problem any degree of consideration, without 
the inevitable conclusion that the causes that 
brought about this colossal banding together of 
the workers of the country are sternly real and 
terribly actual. There are probably to-day in 
this nation two million well informed men, 
whose comfortable circumstances lift them into 
a sphere of life where they have no vital com- 
munity of interest with the workers, who have 
looked at this labor problem just long enough to 
get frightened at its appalling magnitude. It is 
so vast, so complex, so seemingly insoluble by 



THE COMING CLIMAX 167 

any known political or economic expedients, 
that they have turned their backs on it, half in 
despair, half in fear, but altogether with a dazed 
sense of their utter helpnessness in the face of so 
monumental an emergency, and in default of an 
obvious way out they trust to the usual good 
luck of the United States in escaping disaster, 
or else relegate the tremendous riddle to the so- 
lution of divine providence, which is supposed 
by many of our devout people to hold this nation 
as a special charge. 

The ancestors of our Hebrew fellow citizens 
took so much comfort in that same notion once 
upon a time, that they made light of the warn- 
ings of the prophets, and history tells us of the 
outcome. 

These two million men dimly realize that the 
general relief demanded by 8,000,000 produc- 
ers can only come through legislation of the most 
radically reformatory character. The law-mak- 
ing function of the Republic must for the first 
time openly and avowedly concern itself with 
industrial, commercial and financial questions on 
large lines. This must be the most important 
of its duties if it would deal righteously and 
effectively with the insistent labor problem. 



168 THE COMING CLIMAX 

Half-measures and paltry palliatives will only 
irritate; it must be whole measures or nothing 
at all. This is precisely what shocks our two 
million, because it is startlingly heterodox that 
the government should interfere at all in the 
business affairs of the people, in an open and 
above-board manner, with the declared pur- 
pose of helping the great producing masses. 
Every well-informed man knows that the exec- 
utive, legislative and judicial functions of the 
nation have been systematically prostituted to 
the service of rich men and corporations. This 
has been done within the law and outside of it. 
It has been done in defiance of the constitution 
and against the plain rights of the people at 
large, but yet it established no precedent that 
the masses can use for their own advantage, 
because it was done under false pretenses. No 
matter how flagrant the violation of the genius 
of our institutions might be, the act itself was 
always carefully clothed in the garb of seeming 
legality, and thus sent forth into the nation. So 
now, when it is suggested to these two millions 
that our law-makers must go at it and plan leg- 
islation for the distinct purpose of helping the 
lot of the individual toiler and making it more 



THE COMING CLIMAX 169 

bearable, it comes as a proposition that is amaz- 
ingly new. It is a radical innovation on old 
methods, and the first impulse is to doubt and 
sheer off from it. It is a novelty, and all novel- 
ties demand a wear and tear of the brain in order 
to understand them, whereas the established 
order can be accepted without any strain on 
the intellectual faculties; so avaunt! ye novel- 
ties, and let us alone. 

Yes, the relief sought by the great common- 
alty in question can only be found by making 
material changes ,in commercial, financial and 
industrial institutions and customs that are now 
solidly intrenched in our social order. Why 
does this happen to be the case? It so happens 
because the forces that have to do with the 
business and productive systems of the country 
in the way of manufacture and distribution of 
commodities have multiplied their power ten- 
fold in the last forty years. This has come 
about because we now live in what a thousand 
years hence will be called the century of inven- 
tion. New discoveries in scientific and mechan- 
ic 

ical appliances have been rushed in on us so fast, 
that the old equitable status between capital 



170 THE COMING CLIMAX 

and labor which once obtained on this continent 
has been destroyed. Capital paid out its money 
to construct these world-transforming inven- 
tions, and has gathered to itself about all the 
profit arising therefrom. The old-time nicely 
balanced relations and well-nigh even strength 
that once subsisted between labor and capital 
are no more, for while one has shrunk to a pig- 
my the other has grown to a giant. When 
autocratic kings granted monopolies to their 
favorites, it taxed their despotic authority to 
the uttermost to defend them against the com- 
petition of surreptitious traders; while under 
our new commercial regime mighty monopolies 
are created that not only crush all rivalry with 
ease, but likewise dominate the government, 
where their selfish interests are concerned. Is 
it any wonder that productive labor, on whose 
shoulders the dead weight of this overgrown 
Capitalism presses heaviest, should strive to 
defend itself by counter-organization? This 
banding together of these millions of toilers 
offers incontrovertible proof of the compelling 
necessity which called those self-preservative 
societies into being, and their mere existence is 
enough to brand as wrong a social order in 



THE COMING CLIMAX 171 

which Capitalism is supreme. If our republic 
had been under the guidance of patriotic states- 
men during these late years, the present organi- 
zation of producers would be entirely unknown, 
for as the wise physician often tells a patient of 
threatened illness before he fully realizes the 
fact himself, so would high-souled statesmen, 
keeping ceaseless watch and ward for the 
good of the republic, have noted these gigantic 
evils while still in the germ, and have crushed 
them out by legislation before they had done 
harm to the toiling masses. This protective 
action was not taken, because the growth of 
an aggressive capitalism was coincident with the 
rise of the Triumphant Plutocracy to command- 
ing power in the republic. It soon laid its 
strong hand on all the legislative and administra- 
tive functions of the nation. Its pecuniary 
interests could be best served by mis-govern- 
ment, by unjust government, by corrupt gov- 
ernment; and it got just what it wanted by a 
wholesale debauchment of the official class that 
has the working mechanism of the republic in 
charge. The Triumphant Plutocracy is to-day 
the incarnation and visible expression of all the 
intangible entities which are the moving powers 



172 THE COMING CLIMAX 

within our commercial, financial and industrial 
systems, that through their enormous develop- 
ment now unrelentingly oppress the actual pro- 
ducers of wealth. Not only is it omnipotent 
in the business and government of the republic, 
but the Triumphant Plutocracy likewise owns 
the mechanism of both the republican and dem- 
ocratic parties. It dominates most of the great 
papers of the country, whether religious or secu- 
lar, and inspires their editorial utterances with 
a hostility to the people's cause that leads them 
to shamefully represent the genesis, charac- 
ter and aims of this mighty uprising of the pro- 
ducing masses. Its malign influence crouches 
in the pulpit back of the preacher, and when the 
minister would speak brave words in rebuke of 
chartered wrongs, it stifles his voice. So to- 
day we have in this American republic a Tri- 
umphant Plutocracy, standing audaciously forth 
in its practical possession of the country, and 
claiming custody of the democratic idea, to- 
gether with everything which the star-spangled 
banner represents. It boasts as its allies, law 
and order, the reign of peace, the social respec- 
tabilities and Christian civilization. And yet 
forty millions ot men, women and children of 



THE COMING CLIMAX 173 

the toiling masses, whose prosperity it threatens 
and whose intellectual and spiritual advance- 
ment its continued aggressions will inevitably 
stop, brand it as a usurpation in Washington's 
republic, and denounce it as the universal foe 
of liberty and human progress. This would 
truly seem to involve a very serious problem 
for the solution of our nation, for if a graver 
emergency ever confronted any people in any 
age of the world, history has forgotten to make 
a note of it. Be it not deceived, ye optimistic 
ones who would make light of the present crisis, 
because this fall has seen tens of thousands of 
voters from the rreat plain people cast demo- 
cratic or republican ballots in the state elections; 
they have done this casually from habit, amuse- 
ment or passing interest. The contest has 
not touched the deep convictions of their souls. 
Soldiers frequently play cards to pass the 
time, while lying in line of battle waiting the 
bugle-call to action, that means life or death to 
them. It is a way that humanity has of toying 
with trifles in the interim before mighty deeds. 
The hour has not yet struck for the common 
people to fall in ranks under the banner of the 
People's Party, for the purpose of saying them- 



174 THE COMING CLIMAX 

selves and their country by their free ballots, 
but the drums shall soon beat for the mustering, 
and then you may behold how the earnest patri- 
ots spring to a task that commands all the devo- 
tion of their hearts. If you wish for overwhelm- 
ing proof of the minute, far-reaching and uni- 
versal rule of the usurping plutocracy in Amer- 
ica, it can be found in the radically different 
nature of the grievances charged up against it 
by the banded farmers and those brought for- 
ward by the wage-workers. 

Here are two great classes of producers with 
absolutely antipodal environments, both of 
whom bring the same general indictment of 
oppression and extortion against the reign of 
capitalism, but when they become specific in 
their several complaints, the character of their 
respective grievances is ascertained to be 
almost totally dissimilar. The farmers are or- 
ganized against a distant, invisible and intangi- 
ble foe, whose invasions on their prosperity 
come through a railway transportation system, 
that taxes the traffic all that it will bear, through 
an evil financial system that makes money 
scarce, prices low, interest high and mortgages 
plentiful, and the great trusts and speculative 



THE COMING CLIMAX 175 

combinations which at one and the same time 
make him pay sharply for all he buys, and de- 
press the exchange value of everything he has 
to sell. The American farmer, after many years 
of doubt and questioning, has at last come into 
a tolerable clear knowledge of his real situation, 
and knows that while these inimical forces are 
pressing him down, he is no more a master of 
his own fortune than an African slave. Hence 
this army of organized farmers, five million 
strong and more, who are now ranging them- 
selves under the banner of the People's Party. 
They do this because they know of a verity that 
the only relief they may expect must be through 
legislation that is radically remedial; and this 
neither the democratic nor republican party will 
give them, because both of those organizations 
are owned by the Triumphant Plutocracy. 

The Patrician caste knows full well that the 
political barometer indicates a coming storm for 
our republic, and it will be wise for them to 
remember that the American farmer to-day is 
precisely as were his fathers before him; he is 
brave, proud-spirited, independent in feeling, 
jealous of his rights as a citizen of a free repub- 
lic, has never felt the shackles of a slave, and 



176 THE COMING CLIMAX 

never proposes to. His self-respect has not 
been insulted by the presence of a visible auto- 
crat whom he knew was master of his fate. He 
has toiled so long in the solitude of his great fields 
with only the free air and sunshine about him, 
that a sense of his own personal freedom is an 
ineradicable part of his self-consciousness. Gen- 
tlemen plutocrats, five million of these men now 
stand indignant and at bay, against your aggres- 
sions. Do you think it will be wise to press your 
present advantage of them yet a little farther? 
May there not be peril in so doing to yourselves 
and the chartered system of spoliation you find 
so pleasant and profitable? 

Turn we now to the relations of the working- 
men with the dominant capitalism, and at a sur- 
face glance it will be a matter to marvel at how 
he and the farmer came to be fraternal allies, 
through common wrongs and a fundamental 
mutuality of interests. The worker lives in one 
of the hives of population, in a small house or 
a few crowded rooms; the farmer's home has all 
outdoors for its boundless setting. The worker 
is ever conscious of his boss in his outgoings, 
incomings and toiling. The farmer has no 



THE COMING CLIMAX 177 

monitors, save his necessities and ambitions. The 
worker has his wages doled out to him weekly 
or monthly, while the farmer pays himself once 
a year after harvest, and yet these seemingly 
alien elements have been welded into unity by 
the same capitalistic hammer. 

When Thackeray was over here, he quaintly 
remarked to an American friend, "Why, your 
Yankee institutions seem to be so all-fired pow- 
erful that they have even taken the hook out of 
the Jews' noses." Whether or no the demo- 
cratic idea applied in government has a quality 
that can change the physical attributes of man, 
may be a debatable question, but there is no 
doubt whatsoever as to its mystic potency in 
transforming his moral being. It promptly 
takes the submissive crook out of the spinal 
column of his soul, which was hereditary with 
uncounted generations of his serf ancestors. Our 
plutocratic tories who claim to own all the coal, 
which God Almighty stored away thousands of 
centuries ago for the equal benefit of all his 
children, have had some sharp object-lessons in 
this particular of recent years. These coal 
kings met unexpected opposition when they 
strove to force the wages of their American citi- 

12 



178 THE COMING CLIMAX 

zen operatives down to the starvation line, so 
they sent their crafty emissaries abroad into 
despotic lands where labor is most ignorant and 
imbruted, and brought over Poles, Huns and 
Slavs to displace more intelligent workers, who 
cried out and organized for defense when they 
were cheated and oppressed. This change 
served charmingly until the all-pervasive demo- 
cratic idea brought enlightenment to the import- 
ed toilers, and they struck for fairer treatment 
just like ordinary Americans. 

At being thus unexpectedly baffled in their 
swindling scheme, the coal monarchs became 
enraged, after the manner of bunko men, whose 
victim at the last moment discovers the plot 
and refuses to be robbed; so to glut their wrath 
they hired gangs of Pinkerton thugs and shot 
down the toilers whom they could no longer 
deceive and outrage. 

A wonderful educator is this same democratic 
idea, and it has a contagious element in it on 
this republican continent whose influence soon 
reaches the most debased foreign worker, so 
that he comes into a knowledge that he is a 
man and entitled to the ownership of himself. 
Our aggressive capitalism which, if unchecked, 



THE COMING CLIMAX 179 

would never stop short of a practical enslave- 
ment of the working producers, utterly fails to 
realize that out yonder in the mists which hide 
the future, there rise impregnable battlements 
that shall surely beat back the invading march 
of their robber hordes. This strong fortress of 
our God, for the salvation of the liberty and 
prosperity of America's great plain people, is 
the democratic idea regnant in the hearts and 
minds of millions of brave, strong and intelligent 
workers. It is patient and of long suffering; it 
yields back until there comes a time when 
further retreat means degradation and ruin, and 
then it turns at bay and says sternly to the ad- 
vancing foes, "thus far and no farther, at your 
peril." Unless all signs are false, we are rapidly 
nearing the day when this challenge shall be 
hurled at the Triumphant Plutocracy. 

A republican theory of government, conjoined 
with a free press, right of public assemblage and 
a universal system of popular education, tends 
to make the working masses pacific in character 
and patient under passing hardships, that come 
through unjust conditions which they believe 
are either accidental or temporary. 

Their pride of democratic citizenship grudg- 



180 THE COMING CLIMAX 

ingly surrenders to even overwhelming evidence 
when it goes to prove that their boasted inalien- 
able rights and liberties under the republic are 
only pleasing myths. But let this bitter truth 
once get firm place in their free souls and let it 
be re-inforced by the hard fact that their pecun- 
iary circumstances are getting worse and worse 
all the time, struggle as they may. Let them go 
forth with willing hands into a great, rich and 
undeveloped continent, asking labor as a boon, 
and be denied Let them see the old-time 
familiar boss step up into the master, and then 
vanish in some huge corporation, where he 
rules them invisibly as a godless, soulless des- 
pot, whose only relations with the toiler are the 
atheistic ones of the Pennsylvania Iron King, 
who, when his thousand hands were defiling 
into the shop, remarked, "I don't look at them as 
men, but as so much brute force that I buy as I 
do my coal." Let millions of workers come to 
know that the governing power has somehow 
been juggled out of their votes and that legis- 
lative relief for their cruel condition is not 
among the possibilities. Let them come to feel 
that the courts of justice no longer offer them 
refuge from wrong because they have become a 



THE COMING CLIMAX 181 

part of the Plutocracy's enginery of oppression, 
when this time comes, and it is now here, look 
well to yourselves, Messrs. Plutocrats, for you 
stand on a narrow ledge between bottomless 
gulfs. 

For years it has been the subtle policy of 
the Plutocracy to keep the farmers and wage- 
workers apart. It sedulously endeavored to 
make their interests seem as antagonistic, as 
the conditions of their daily lives are alien. It 
has striven to play their several protective 
organizations against each other, by making it 
appear that any benefit gained by the wage 
workers must be at the expense of the farmer 
and vice versa. By fomenting an enduring 
hostility between them, each would serve as a 
counterpoise to the other, their power would be 
neutralized, and the Triumphant Plutocracy 
could make spoil of both with ease and security. 
But its Machiavellian craft did not stop there. 
It sent shrewd emissaries into all these various 
societies of producers, for the purpose of keep- 
ing the members rigidly within their old party 
lines. It strove to cut each one of those organ- 
izations squarely in the middle, making of them 



182 THE COMING CLIMAX 

rival democratic and republican teams in a "tug 
of war" game, wherein they should waste all 
their strength pulling against one another. 
These artful schemes have served their evil pur- 
pose thoroughly in the past, but their day is now 
over. Members of the same societies at last 
perceive they have an indestructible solidarity 
of interest, and must pull together in all things, 
while the grand organizations of the farmers 
and wage workers are rapidly coming to know 
that as producing citizens of a common country, 
they must be eternally friends and brothers. 

They now feel that their emancipation and 
salvation can only be wrought out through inde- 
pendent political action outside of the old party 
machines. Hence, the present uprising of the 
masses, and the fraternal hand-clasping of farm- 
ers and wage workers, as they rally round the 
snow-white standard of the People's Party. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE AIR IS HEAVY WITH A GREAT FEAR 

"All the old abuses in society, the great and universal and the petty 
and particular, all unjust accumulations of property and power, are 
avenged. Fear is an instructor of great sagacity and the herald of all 
revolutions. He is a carrion crow, and though you see not well what he 
hovers for, there is death somewhere. That obscene bird is not there 
for nothing. He indicates great wrongs which must be revised." — {Ralph 
Waldo Emerson. 

This fear referred to by the Concord philoso- 
pher is abroad in our land to-day, and in partic- 
ular does it possess the plutocratic caste, which 
is criminally responsible for the growth and con- 
tinuance of the evils that now oppress the pro- 
ducing masses. But this fear does by no means 
completely dominate them, for if it did they 
would eagerly seek to make terms with the banded 
workers who now stand indignant and at bay. 
Its lust for power and wealth is so overmaster- 
ing, that the Plutocracy will not voluntarily sur- 
render the least of its special privileges, even 
under the guaranteed certainty of saving all the 
rest of them. The law of its selfish being will 

not allow the slightest concession in favor of 
183 



184 THE COMING CLIMAX 

justice, right, or even self-preservation. It will 
fight to the last, and die striving to hold on to 
every one of its brigand charters. 

Now vitalize this unbending determination 
with a lively sentiment of fear, and you have the 
most active, unrelenting and altogether cruel 
force in the laboratory of human nature, and one 
that slays and destroys without either judgment 
or mercy, when under the frenzied craze of real 
or fancied danger. If Robespierre had not been 
a coward, history would have been spared its 
bloodiest page. The "reign of terror" was 
born of his fear and unconquerable will. He 
was resolute to hold power in revolutionary 
France, and regarded all reasonable opposition 
as hostile both to his rule and life. He trem- 
bled with horror at his foe, but at the same 
time launched the bolt that killed with a firm 
hand. His insane terror gave the fairest and 
bravest to the guillotine, and the whole land 
streamed with innocent blood, until his own 
head fell under the avenging knife. 

The spirit of Robespierre lives to-day in the 
Triumphant Plutocracy of America, with multi- 
plied cowardice, determination and savagery, and 
in this fact is the supreme peril of our Nation's 



THE COMING CLIMAX 185 

future. If you would know what it would do in 
times to come, examine its ferocious record in 
the past. There has rarely been a temporary 
suspension of toil or actual strike on any railway 
or in any mine, no matter what the circumstances 
or how great and manifest the grievances com- 
plained of on the part of workers, that the plu- 
tocratic proprietors would not have crushed 
instantly by wholesale slaughter could they have 
had their will. In their relations with the hum- 
ble toilers they have not only scouted their just 
claims as citizens of a free and equal republic, 
but have also denied them natural rights as fel- 
low human beings. Their actions have habitu- 
ally been those of masters toward slaves, except 
when this tyrant attitude has been overawed by 
the resolute strength of the strikers themselves. 
Arbitration, compromise and just concession, 
have only been granted when a solution by the 
rifle became impolitic or impracticable, for the 
plutocracy's first impulse has always been the 
tigerish one of gaining a victory by bloodshed 
and killing. There has not been a labor trouble 
of any magnitude since the great railway strike of 
1877, that has not offered overwhelming proof of 
this assertion. When we come to entering up 



186 THE COMING CLIMAX 

evidence in substantiation of this affirmation, 
the very mass of the material at hand hinders 
rather than helps the task. Scores of instances 
of plutocratic atrocity crowd to the front and in 
the sacred name of justice and mercy demand a 
hearing. It would need a library of volumes, to 
tell all the tragic stories of plutocratic crime as 
they should be told, and even when the narration 
had so extended itself as to make a distinct school 
of criminal literature, the chronicles of the mon- 
umental cruelties of the Triumphant Plutocracy 
would then be only few and fragmentary, for 
they must ever remain incomplete, until included 
with them are the biographies of the millions of 
the lowly, whose prosperity it has pillaged and 
whose souls it has dwarfed. There is one place, 
however, where the plutocracy's demonisms 
are spread full on the record, and that is in the 
book of the high court of heaven, and before this 
tribunal of last resort no plutocrat can appear by 
attorney, but must make answer to the Omnip- 
otent Judge in person. 

It is within the knowledge of every well in- 
formed man of our comfortable middle class, 
that during the last twenty years the Triumph- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 187 

ant Plutocracy has pursued a career of fla- 
grant, premeditated, and adroitly systematized 
crime against the nation at large. It has 
stolen over 250,000,000 acres of the people's 
land through fraud, misrepresentation and 
by corrupt connivance on the part of the 
government officials whom it bought. It has 
deliberately debauched our once upright judic- 
iary both in the state and nation, and thereby 
secured legal countenance and indorsement for 
its own unjust claims, while driving the just ones 
of humble suitors out of court. It is known to all 
men that through these agencies the Triumph- 
ant Plutocracy has feloniously filched billions 
of wealth from the people at large. In the one 
item of railway transportation, by reason of its 
putting five dollars of fictitious capital to every 
one dollar of actual investment, and demanding 
and compelling carrying rates that enable it to 
realize a round interest on this bogus valuation, it 
gathers in scores of millions of robber blackmail 
every year from the productive resources of the 
country. This is not only a high crime against 
righteous political economy, but is a direct at- 
tack on the moral and material well-being of 
the whole people, and the nation which patiently 



188 THE COMING CLIMAX 

endures it is neither free nor civilized, and would 
meekly cower before an invading despot without 
striking one brave blow for liberty. 

Our comfortable middle class, in its self-in- 
dulgent apathy and cowardly fear of reform, not 
only continues to tolerate these monstrous evils, 
but also strives to forget their existence; and it 
is entirely logical in so doing, for once concede 
their enormity and a manifest duty becomes in- 
stantly apparent if they would save their country 
from ruin; whereas by ignoring them of course 
no insistent task appears at hand, and they can 
conscientiously lie down and take their ease. If 
such be the nerveless attitude of the middle 
class in regard to the general crimes of the plu- 
tocracy against the nation at large, it readily 
follows that they would be blind and deaf to the 
infamous outrages perpetrated by it on humble 
individual workers, and so it hath been. 

As heretofore remarked, the plutocracy has, 
during the last fifteen years, shown a blood- 
thirsty ferocity toward complaining workers in 
so many instances, each one of which was so 
flagrantly cruel as to be worthy of special men- 
tion, that we are well nigh at a loss as to the 
selection of a few particular cases by way of gen- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 189 

eral illustration. As this work is in the main a 
philosophical review of the causes which now 
threaten to make this American continent the 
theater of the bloodiest tragedy in the annals of 
the human race, specific details would be out of 
place, because the sole purpose of this book is 
to make the reader a student of the momentous 
questions in whose solution his own life and 
property, the future of his children and the 
destiny of his country are alike involved. So 
merely for the purpose of giving due empha- 
sis to the foregoing statement, we will briefly 
mention a few cases, that in themselves stand 
for great groups of similar events. In the strike 
on the Gould system a few years ago, the Pink- 
ertons were used with a ruthlessness quite char- 
acteristic of the wrecker who hired their services, 
and railway men were shot down without a 
shadow of valid excuse. It is declared by those 
who knew, that this strike was deliberately 
worked up for stock-jobbing purposes, and that 
the blood of the murdered strikers was by Sa- 
tanic alchemy transmuted into millions in gold. 
In the Pennsylvania coke mine strike it seems 
that the imported laborers were first deceived 
and outraged and then deliberately massacred 



190 THE COMING CLIMAX 

according to a pre-arranged plan. When peace 
was established by an overawing military force, 
the millionaires flung old and young, women 
and children, sick and well, out of their miser- 
able cabins on to the highway to starve or die 
of exposure, just as chance might elect. At 
the Spring Valley mine in Illinois, owned by 
great capitalists with an aggregate of four hun- 
dred million dollars among them, the miners 
were without warning locked out and left to the 
tender mercies of cold and famine. It was at 
this place that philanthropic visitors found lit- 
tle children crying silently because they were so 
hungry. The Rev. Dr. Patton, of New York, 
who was recently in Chicago for the purpose of 
protesting against the World's fair being open 
on Sunday, has several millionaire parishioners 
among his devout flock, who were directly re- 
sponsible for those little children weeping be- 
cause they had not bread to eat. Plutocratic 
religion is certainly an amazing product, for if 
the New Testament is true we should suppose 
that these pious communicants would rather 
take their chances in hell than to affront the 
accusing eye of Jesus Christ, who said, "Suffer 
little children to come unto me and forbid them 
not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." 



THE COMING CLIMAX 191 

According to recent advice from the far-away 
state of Washington, the Pinkertons killed 
miners who were entirely unoffending and drove 
large numbers of frightened women and children 
into the depths of the forest. There in the 
darkness of the night, with neither light nor 
fire, with a stormy sky overhead and the wet 
ground for their only couch, two miners' wives 
gave premature birth to babes, brought untimely 
forth by reason of their mothers' terror. 

If you would parallel the atrocities which we 
we have but lightly sketched, you must leave 
the white race and Christian civilization and 
turn to the chronicles of the Sepoy insurrection 
or to the horrors of an Apache raid, and yet all 
these deeds, worthy of the nethermost circle of 
the infernal regions, were perpetrated by mill- 
ionaire citizens of Washington's republic, that 
they might glut their accursed thirst for gold. 

When our comfortable middle class read of 
these God-defying enormities they feel a pass- 
ing scringe of pity for the miserable wretches 
who have been crushed by plutocracy's Jugger- 
naut, and then, swiftly forgetting the awful 
agony of these lowly ones, turn with keen inter- 
est to a minute and circumstantial account of 



192 THE COMING CLIMAX 

the last aristocratic ball or garden party, and 
enviously hunger after the millions that would 
admit them to the gorgeous festivities of these 
favored Babylonians. Is it well for this mid- 
dle class, which has so great a stake in the gen- 
eral peace and prosperity of the country, to for- 
get these things, without first assuring them- 
selves that God Almighty has forgotten them 
likewise? Is it not blind fatuity for men to 
forget while the Deity remembers? A violated 
moral law disturbs the nice balance of God's 
eternal equities, and the inexorable penalty 
must follow before the mighty scales of divine 
justice can swing back into place. 

Shall there be punishment for the sins of men 
and not for those of nations? Go into the gray 
silence of far Eastern lands and find your answer 
amid the dismal wreckage of once proud cities. 
"For the spider hath woven her web in the ban- 
queting hall of kings, and the owl keepeth her 
nightwatchin the towers of Afrasiab." 

The New York Central strike of a year ago 
had incidents connected with it that should of 
right set our middle class to doing some toler- 
ably stern thinking, unless they have in their 
secret hearts already given up the American re- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 193 

public, and now look forward with placid satis- 
faction to the advent of a tyrannical oligarchy 
of plutocrats constructed on the lines indicated 
in "Caesar's Column. " 

In the first place the high officials of the Cen- 
tral road brought on the strike by malicious acts 
of injustice which were deliberately done with 
that end in view. When they had succeeded 
thus far, they called in the service of heavily 
armed Pinkertons who were already in waiting, 
in sure anticipation of the event, and after the 
manner of their thug kind these uniformed fel- 
lows took the greatest satisfaction in shooting 
down honest men and women, because it was 
rarely that these professional criminals had such 
a safe chance to glut their hate of decent people, 
who are their natural enemies. The main bat- 
tle ground of this strike was at Albany, New 
York, the state capital, and it is a most sinister 
circumstance that the Vanderbilts, while know- 
ing that the city, county and state officials would 
jump at the chance of using all the governmental 
machinery in their favor, and would even obse- 
quiously crawl in the dust to render services 
which plutocratic gratitude might afterwards 
richly reward — with a clear foreknowledge of this 
*3 



194 THE COMING CLIMAX 

state of affairs — did nevertheless decline to ask 
the protection of the constituted authorities at 
the outset of the difficulty. 

"All things in their order," said these bloody- 
minded plutocratic conspirators; "the first thing 
that we want is for our willing Pinkertons to 
provoke an outbreak on the part of the railway 
men by the wanton murder of some of their 
number, then when the resultant breach of the 
peace on the part of the strikers attains sufficient 
magnitude for our purpose, we can go screaming 
to the governor and ask that he use all the mil- 
itary power of the state to suppress a labor 
insurrection that is so ferociously anarchistic in 
character that it threatens law and order, 
life and property, and the very existence of or- 
ganized society. All of our newspapers will 
frantically take up the cry and demand the in- 
stant suppression of the outbreak, even if it in- 
volves the killing of tens of thousands of men, 
women and children. The timorous middle class, 
frightened out of their wits, will countenance the 
most merciless severities, which in a craze of 
fear they will deem to be necessary for the safety 
of their own precious selves. Under these con- 
ditions our victory will be swift and overwhelm- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 195 

ing, and as its sequel we can pick out and arrest 
every workingman who has ever had the least 
prominence as a labor leader, and can safely 
leave their fate in the hands of a judiciary that 
is as friendly as those English judges who, after 
the rebellion of 1745, said to the governmental 
authorities, 'Bring on the men you want executed 
and we will find the law to hang them by. ' 
Then again this triumph will be a successful bat- 
tle for organized capital in its general campaign 
against organized labor, and the prestige of it 
will strengthen our arms all over the United 
States." 

The only reason this black conspiracy was not 
carried out to the letter in every detail, was be- 
cause of the patient forbearance of the work- 
ingmen under outrages of the most cruel and 
infamous character. This triumph of practical 
Christianity was equally due to the self-control 
and sober sense of the strikers, and the wise and 
statesmanlike guidance of T. V. Powderly and 
his able staff of leaders. And all this time the 
democratic governor of the state of New York 
sat secluded in his luxurious chambers and never 
lifted voice or hand in defense of the democratic 
idea in human government which was being as- 



196 THE COMING CLIMAX 

sassinated within rifle-shot of the executive 
mansion. But why should a person in whom 
the political degeneracy of the times finds full 
incarnation, make a move on the side of the nat- 
ural rights of man? The debauched senators of 
Rome, ambititious only for place and gold, con- 
tinued to mouth their lying platitudes of the 
freedom and glory of the Republic, after the last 
vestige of popular liberty had vanished and 
when the nation had been for centuries under 
the absolute rule of a long line of imperial ty- 
rants. Thus this governor prates of his amazing 
love and reverence for the principles of Thomas 
Jefferson, and yet sees them trampled under 
foot without protest. But what Gan he do if he 
would well serve his Presidential aspirations in 
these plutocratic times, when one evil look from 
the banded corporations would destroy his 
chance for even the nomination, while on the 
other hand the voting masses of the democratic 
party need not be taken into account, because 
the modern political machine has made them 
impotent? They are in precisely the same sit- 
uation as were millions of Frenchmen under 
Napoleon III, whose suffrages merely registered 
the will of the despot. Jeffersonian democracy 



THE COMING CLIMAX 197 

is no longer an applied principle in the life of 
this nation, but its abstract sentimentalism 
must still be used to juggle the people, because 
it is the only stock-in-trade of the ambitious ad- 
venturers who are now helping the Triumphant 
Plutocracy in the subjugation of the masses and 
the overthrow of republican institutions. We do 
not single out Governor Hill as a man apart, 
but fraternally group him with Blaine, Cleve- 
land, McKinley, Carlisle, Sherman, Brice and the 
whole list of recreant Americans, who pose as 
statesmen in these closing years of a corrupt 
cycle, which must either soon pass away and 
give place to a purer one, or our country will go 
down to destruction amid the most awful storm of 
fire and blood ever recorded in history. 

We pick up a paper of the day and note 
these headlines: 

ARMED MEN IMPORTED. 

TRYING TO BREAK THE STRIKE. 

NEW SWITCHMEN AND A GUARD OF DETECTIVES 
ARRIVE AT PEORIA. 

PREPARING TO FIGHT. 

TROUBLE EXPECTED AT PEORIA. 



198 THE COMING CLIMAX 

RAILROADS BRINGING IN ARMED GUARDS TO BREAK 
THE STRIKE. 

Of late years these conflicts between capital 
and labor have been so frequent that they have 
become commonplace both to newspaper men 
and the public at large; were this not the case 
they would not be treated in the casual, matter- 
of-fact way set forth in the foregoing head- 
lines. It is right here that the patriotic philoso- 
pher finds himself borne down by a terrible de- 
spair. If the middle class were shocked by this 
unnatural condition of affairs in a republic, there 
would be reasonable hope of its being remedied, 
and thus the universal catastrophe which is now 
threatened might be averted. But custom has so 
staled these ever-recurring strikes, that they no 
longer see in them the outcroppings of an under- 
ground force, which may one day burst forth, 
making of our country one tumultuous scene of 
ruin, and perhaps also one vast charnel-house. 
The present generation is largely one of unbe- 
lievers, yet it should clearly remember the stun- 
ning shock and barely averted disaster that went 
with the railway strikes of 1877. Discontented 
labor was then a puling infant; now it is a brawny 



THE COMING CLIMAX 199 

giant, and it were well to beware of provoking 
it to just wrath. 

The main danger of these strikes arises from 
the fact that the government is criminally guilty 
in allowing the Triumphant Plutocracy to usurp 
functions which rightfully belong to itself alone, 
viz., those of keeping the peace and determin- 
ing difficulties that arise between its citizens. 

It will be noted that the headlines heretofore 
quoted contain no hint that the railway cor- 
poration applied to the sheriff or Governor for 
protection. Ah, no ; the arrogant temper of the 
plutocracy is not in accord with any such sub- 
missive attitude. It will first try to have its 
own haughty way through brute force and mur- 
der, and will only call on the authorities when 
the Pinkerton army is found to be inadequate. 
The rise of the Triumphant Plutocracy and the 
rise of Pinkertonism have been coincident, 
because Pinkertonism, while not being a necessity 
under the law, is a handy convenience for a 
plutocracy that works outside of the law when- 
ever possible. 

When an American who truly loves his country 
and its free institutions reviews the history of 



200 THE COMING CLIMAX 

the republic from earliest times and at last 
comes down to the present epoch and notes the 
rise of Pinkertonism, he must be struck with 
horror at the evil circumstance. It is something 
hostile to our democratic theory of government 
and entirely alien to the "reign of law" in organ- 
ized society, to see on this new continent a prac- 
tical revival of Imperium in Imperio, of that 
which should be subordinate in a nation claim- 
ing lawless independence of it. This is but a 
re-assertion of the feudal barons' anarchistic 
franchise. Richelieu's iron hand crushed it to 
death in France two hundred years ago, but 
here it is to-day in Washington's republic, res- 
urrected and endowed with a more malign life 
than it ever knew before. And yet our comfort- 
able middle class, made drunk by the Triumph- 
ant Plutocracy's drugged wine, cannot see its 
monstrous inconsistency with our republican in- 
stitutions. They cannot see that it is a danger- 
ous foreign element, which must be expelled or 
it will surely make the nation over in harmony 
with itself; and this would be to transform the 
republic into a despotism. The Triumphant Plu- 
tocracy, with its Pinkerton private army, stands 
in deadly antagonism to our democratic theory of 



The coming climax 2'oi 

government. They cannot long continue to co- 
exist in the same nation, and it is only a ques- 
tion of time when there shall be a duel to the 
death between them. 

If the comfortable middle class will now rise up 
and take the side of 8,000,000 producers, which 
is also the side of justice, liberty, popular pros- 
perity and national progress, the Triumphant Plu- 
tocracy and the Pinkertons can be overcome 
and disarmed by force of numbers and without a 
struggle. But if this self-same indulgent middle 
class continues to do as it has done in the past 
and gives the dead weight of its respectabilities, 
together with its passive toleration, to the ever- 
increasing aggressions of the Triumphant Plu- 
tocracy, our country will soon enter upon the 
blackest and bloodiest era in all its history. An 
irrepressible conflict is as truly with us to-day as 
it was in i860, and the forewarnings of an ap- 
proaching tragedy of national dimensions are a 
hundredfold more numerous than they were 
then. This conviction is to-day openly expressed 
by millions of lowly men: this fact of a verity we 
do know. We also know that millions of com- 
fortably circumstanced people have a vague sense 
of a great impending change ; they have an uneasy 



S02 THE COMING CLIMAX 

feeling that some ill thing is going to happen — 
they scarce know what. Lastly, the Triumph- 
ant Plutocrats likewise know that something is 
going to happen, and fancy they have accurately 
estimated both its character and strength. 

They think it will be a passing outbreak of a 
small number of oppressed producers-, whom they 
can first hold up to the public opinion of the 
nation as willful breakers of the peace and then 
proceed to crush, as revolters, into subjection, 
after which a strong oligarchic government will 
be in order, backed by military force, that will 
see to it that the present lawless freedom of press 
and speech is placed under sharp restraints; and 
then the Triumphant Plutocracy can reign in 
peace and pile up wealth from the workers' toil 
at its good pleasure, and having in its own opin- 
ion baffled God's evolutionary law for the prog- 
ress of humanity on earth, it may build Babel 
towers in order to dispute his rule in heaven. 

That end is not yet here, but the universal 
doubt of to-morrow is, and that of itself is 
God's imploring call that all good men should 
be up and doing, so that evil days come not 
upon them. 



CHAPTER XII 

GUIDES THAT MISLEAD THE PEOPLE 

"These power-units of wealth gather about them a clientele of faith- 
ful, because well-paid, dependents, who speak, write and act for them as 
occasion demands, and who, by their wit and effrontery, manage to guide 
much of public opinion in behalf of their masters. Some of these de- 
pendents are editors of influential journals, who skillfully make the 
worse the better reason, and call evil good, so that honest-minded read- 
ers are found to be sympathizing with the unfortunate capitalist, against 
whom the wicked proletariat says such hard things."— [Rev. Dr. Howard 
Crosby, in the "North American Review." 

At this point in our work and before proceed- 
ing further on a course of investigation, where 
the shadows of impending catastrophe are des- 
tined to become ever more dark and menacing, it 
will be well to fearlessly indicate the nature and 
animus of those subtle foes of peace and civiliza- 
tion, who are now deliberately blindfolding the 
potential middle class of America, even while their 
footsteps tend toward the verge of an awful gulf 
that has death and universal destruction at the 
bottom. The first of these enemies of the republic 
is the attorney caste, composed of about 80,000 
approval legal initiates, whose primary axiom 
declares that paper laws and mildewed prece- 
203 



204 The coming climax 

dents are the most sacred things in God's uni- 
verse, and that before them the rights, prosperity 
and happiness of millions of human beings be- 
come as nothing. These men give no recognition 
of the unwritten higher law, and deny the ever- 
living sense of justice which the Almighty has 
breathed into the soul of man. They are the 
stolid foes of God's evolutionary plan for the 
material and spiritual advancement of humanity, 
and will not co-operate with the Divine Father in 
bettering the condition of mankind, because their 
eyes are always peering into the murky twilight 
of the past, and never see the sunlit path of the 
grander future, up which man at last shall climb 
to nobler levels of being. And yet during the 
entire life of the republic this close corporation 
of lawyers has held an exclusive monopoly of 
making, declaring and administering the laws. 
All this has been done by reason of the confid- 
ing simplicity of the millions of the great plain 
people, who had a modest doubt as to their 
capacity of governing through men who were 
truly representatives of themselves, and hence 
chose attorneys whom they deemed abler for 
the task. 

It is this manifest inconsistency of a democracy 



THE COMING CLIMAX 205 

being ruled by men whose interests are on the side 
of the wealthy class, which will always subvert 
popular government unless sharply restrained, 
that has brought our country to the dangerous 
pass where it is to-day. What is the attitude 
of the attorneys toward the present emergency? 
just what you would expect from a body of men 
whose ideal state is to become the high-salaried 
counsel of a big corporation. They deny the 
emergency, in the first place, and would minimize 
the present uprising of 8,000,000 banded toilers, 
into the passing and inconsequential grumbling 
of the lower orders, whom our democratic theory 
of government predisposes to a groundless discon- 
tent with their present condition, no matter what 
it may be. The average lawyer can in fifteen 
minutes dispose, to his own satisfaction, of every 
one of the vexing problems which are keeping 
patriotic thinkers awake nights, and he will do it 
on flimsy quibbles and shallow special pleas that 
should be rejected on sight by a normally upright 
mind, as being totally insufficient. This comes 
about because the lawyer never considers the 
abstract righteousness of things, but will always 
do with a clear conscience that which is permis- 
sible under the letter of the law, no matter how 



206 THE COMING CLIMAX 

much it may violate its spirit. A case in point 
occurs to us as showing how obtuse attorneys 
are to the obligation of civic morality. A Chicago 
lawyer of high eminence, and one whose social 
and professional purity has given him a reputa- 
tion as a legal Chevalier Bayard, without fear 
and without reproach, bought some lots of the 
Presbyterian Church of which he is an honored 
member. A friend remarked to him, "Your taxes 
will be high, as that property is valuable." a Oh, 
no, they will not," he remarked with a superior 
smile, "the church, you see, pays no taxes at all 
on this real estate, so that I will not have my 
deed recorded until I get ready to sell the lots." 
You might as well try to convince a Digger 
Indian that stealing is wrong per se, as to hope 
to impress this distinguished attorney with the 
conception that he was guilty of a misdemeanor 
as a citizen toward the state through his action. 
He was in fact robbing the commonwealth of its 
due under the law, and yet these lawyers, who 
look on all social and economic questions from 
the selfish and intellectual standpoint, and never 
from the moral and spiritual side, wield a tre- 
mendous influence on the public opinion of our 
middle class, and are now sedulously engaged in 



THE COMING CLIMAX 207 

administering opiates to their partially awakened 
comprehensions. The middle class has at last 
come to doubt whether all matters are precisely 
perfect in our country at the present time. They 
are not altogether certain that Jay Gould's for- 
tune is a beautiful result of our free and equal 
republican institutions and merely goes to show 
what the grand and glorious country we live in 
can do in the way of rewarding honest business 
enterprise on the part of its citizens. In these 
moments of timorous questioning, Mr. Brisk At- 
torney steps up with his complacent smile and 
confident manner, and by a plethora of legal jar- 
gon and sophistical reasoning proves to the middle 
class man, who is all too ready to be convinced, 
that the situation of our republic is exception- 
ally blessed, and that any dream of possible dan- 
ger is due to moral dyspepsia. The legal gentle- 
man may be quite sincere in his argument, be- 
cause self-interest is a potent special pleader, 
and the lawyers as a class have a dim suspicion 
that the radical changes which might come about 
by reason of the present uprising of the produc- 
ers, would bode no good to the lucrative fran- 
chises now enjoyed by their favored guild. 



208 THE COMING CLIMAX 

The ministers of the country through their 
utterances probably deal out still more deadly 
soporifics to the middle class than do the law- 
yers, for they speak ex cathedra as regularly con- 
stituted religious oracles. They carry the entire 
lot of industrial and political problems, whose 
worrying complexities are now the subject of pro- 
found concern with the productive classes, into 
the domain of Christian morals, where they claim 
rule as exclusive experts. There they presum- 
ably cogitate seriously upon these questions, but 
it is noted that after an exceedingly brief stay 
behind the veil of the inner sanctuary, where no 
unconsecrated foot may tread, they come forth 
and announce authoritatively, that the relations 
between capital and labor in this republic would 
be the perfection of righteousness but for certain 
anarchistic and socialistic tendencies on the part 
of the impious working people. Thus do they 
soothe the troubled consciences of the more 
spiritual portion of the laity to pleasant slum- 
ber. It does not disturb the soundness of our 
general statement regarding the clergy that such 
noble souls as Rev. Lyman Abbott, Heber New- 
ton, Father Huntington and the late Dr. Howard 
Crosby long since saw and denounced the cruel 



THE COMING CLIMAX 209 

enormities which an aggressive capitalism per- 
petrates on the lowly toilers. The pity and mar- 
vel of it is that only here and there can a minis- 
ter be picked out from among tens of thousands 
of professed teachers of holy things, who preaches 
the gospel of charity and justice, as taught and 
practiced by Jesus Christ, and which is but spuri- 
ous and of false pretension unless made manifest 
in loving deeds. 

There are only a few instances in history 
where the whole body of a clergy stood out 
against the established order and antagonized the 
strong and rich powers that were, and these in- 
stances are quite readily accounted for. The 
early Christians, who worshiped in the Cata- 
combs of Rome, naturally created ministers from 
themselves, who suffered martyrdom and died 
with them. The same is also true of the Cov- 
enanters in Scotland, the Cromwellians in En- 
gland, and the patriotic divines who helped the 
rebels during our revolutionary war. All these 
merely went with their flocks. It was observed 
during the anti-slavery crusade prior to our civil 
war that the majority of the members of a church 
frequently got squarely into abolitionism, before 
the laggard pastor had fairly stopped picking out 

*4 



210 THE COMING CLIMAX 

scripture texts to prove that human slavery was 
right because ordained by God. It can be laid 
down as a broad general rule, that where the 
clerical gentlemen are honored and well provided 
for, under an order of society that is satisfactory 
to a majority of their congregations, they rarely 
take a radical initiative in righting existing 
wrongs, no matter how hostile these may be to 
the spirit of that Christianity of which they are 
the accredited expounders. 

So we find to-day that our clergy, having deaf- 
ened their own ears to the piteous cry of lowly 
humanity, are using the salve of a perverted 
religious logic to stop up those of the laity who 
otherwise might hear and heed the plaint and 
wailing which now rises ever louder and louder 
throughout the land. 

Lastly we come to the most malignly power- 
ful of all the agencies which, consciously or un- 
consciously, are keeping the middle class deceived 
as to the actual state of the country, viz., the 
newspapers and periodicals which defend the 
present order because they find profit in so doing. 

The attitude of these publications toward the 
Triumphant Plutocracy with which they are 



THE COMING CLIMAX 211 

leagued in interest is much the same as that of 
a favored jester in a mediaeval court. His biting 
quip touched my lord, my lady, the duke, the 
cardinal and even the sacred majesty of the king 
himself, revealing, satirizing and rebuking foibles, 
vices and crimes, and yet we are not told that the 
frankness of this merry gentleman reformed much 
of anything in particular, still less did his candor 
endanger the existence of evil institutions which 
made his life so easy and full of enjoyment. 

Our great daily newspapers, together with the 
influential religious and agricultural weeklies, 
make a brave show of attacking the abuses which 
have grown up under the rule of the Triumphant 
Plutocracy. They will take hold of Jay Gould 
and verbally castigate him without mercy, refer 
in scathing terms to the colossal rascalities of the 
Standard Oil Trust, and then turn to an admir- 
ing clientele of readers and say, "Mark our fear- 
lessness and independence; behold how valiantly 
we march up to the great red dragon and pull 
his whiskers! Rest in peace; the nation is entirely 
safe while we are on guard ! " 

Doubtless many of these journals are largely 
self-deluded and imagine they are free agents, 
while in point of fact they are chained fast to 



212 THE COMING CLIMAX 

the triumphal car of the plutocracy through an 
inexorable self-interest that overmasters all 
patriotic and humane considerations. The 
craftiest art in conception, conjoined to the 
most diabolical dexterity in construction, could 
not have produced a piece of juggling mechan- 
ism better calculated to beguile the middle 
class of all fear for the future and at the 
same time make them accept a pleasant seeming 
for the dangerous reality of our country's condi- 
tion than these aggregated newspapers and peri- 
odicals, which boldly criticize the Triumphant 
Plutocracy on minor issues and surface manifes- 
tations, and yet defend it to the limit when its 
evil vital principle is seriously threatened. 

Fifty years ago it frequently happened that 
the editorial columns of leading journals took 
place ahead of the news columns in the appre- 
ciation of readers. This is not true now of any 
daily paper in the United States. Twenty-five 
years ago it was true of the New York "Tribune," 
"Times," "World," Springfield "Republican, "Al- 
bany "Evening Journal," Chicago "Tribune, "Cin- 
cinnati " Commercial, " St. Louis " Democrat, " Chi- 
cago "Times," St. Louis "Republican," and other 
journals of influence in the smaller cities of the 



THE COMING CLIMAX 213 

country. During the last quarter of a century times 
have much changed, and the typical middle class 
American has changed with them. Where his cast 
of mind was once provincial it is now cosmopol- 
itan. The influence on him of editorial opinion, 
though still powerful, has lost by one-half, while 
the news columns have increased their potency 
tenfold. The daily newspaper is with the middle 
class man morning, night and Sundays, and 
through it he takes his main outlook on the 
world. His business and social affairs so compel 
him that he cannot give the time to investigate 
below the surface of things and see if there be 
not new facts and phenomena in our political 
life, which the newspapers only scantily mention. 
It is hardly possible to conceive that any essential 
information is omitted, when the papers are 
packed so full of news that it is utterly out of the 
question for him to read and accurately compre- 
hend the nature and tendency of all the leading 
public events of a commercial, social or govern- 
mental character, which continually crowd them- 
selves on his notice. He is proudly conscious of 
living in a great age and country. What a 
rushing, upbuilding time this is, to be sure! Vast 
enterprises going on, wealth being piled up as 



214 THE COMING CLIMAX 

never before, organized society expanding on 
every side, the mighty constructive forces of civ- 
ilization working with ever-increasing power and 
energy ! What a big, strong nation it is with its 
tremendous activities and haughty consciousness 
of full sufficiency for any labor or any danger! 
The idea that overwhelming disaster can come to 
so massive a republic in the near future is monu- 
mentally absurd, to our middle class man of to- 
day 

Go back to i860 and inform Robert Toombs 
and Jefferson Davis that their brave and mas- 
terful southland will be laid very low in its dar- 
ing attempt to dominate the North American 
continent. How often in the chronicles of the 
past do we note that in the very hour of a 
nation's most audacious self-confidence, an 
unseen hand lets loose destroying forces that 
mock its vain ambitions and humble its pride 
into the dust ! 

It is an established fact that the flourishing 
newspapers of the land, which find their inter- 
ests particularly well served by the Triumphant 
Plutocracy, have until very recently pushed a 
"campaign of silence" against the uprising of the 



THE COMING CLIMAX 215 

producing masses of America. In the case of the 
banding together of the factory, shop, railway 
and mine operatives, certain tragic events have 
from time to time brought the fact of these 
organizations into such prominence that the daily 
newspapers could not ignore them. Then it 
became their systematic policy to belittle their 
strength and hold the general purpose of these 
labor societies up to the ridicule, contempt and 
moral reprobation of the well-off and so-called 
respectable classes, who make public opinion 
for the nation. These newspapers have habitually 
talked down at the banded workers of the coun- 
try, as if they were not only an inferior order of 
human beings but were also the victims of 
vicious impulses altogether unknown among the 
better classes. They have not considered their 
claims and grievances from the standpoint of a 
common humanity, but set them apart as beings 
of an alien class, whose hopes and aspirations 
could not be judged by the standards applied to 
cultured and refined people. By hint, innuendo 
and direct assertion they have conveyed the im- 
pression that this vast swarm of grimy workers 
constitutes a dangerous element in the republic, 
whose possible ravages must be secretly but 
carefully guarded against. 



216 THE COMING CLIMAX 

The newspapers in question have done this, 
are still doing it, and by so doing prove them- 
selves the enemies of justice and human progress. 
They fail to realize the dangers of their course, 
for if they did they would no longer pursue it. 
In denying the legitimacy of these associations of 
banded toilers, and by scouting at the reasonable 
reforms they ask, they are urging the country 
toward one of two terrible eventualities, which 
must soon come to pass — either the Triumphant 
Plutocracy will practically overthrow republican 
institutions, and rear an oligarchy that will be 
run according to Russian methods, or a great up- 
heaval will take place on the part of the founda- 
tion class of society that will shake this nation to 
its center. These same journals in their treat- 
ment of the great farmer movement have been 
equally sly, secretive and pusillanimous. For 
years they practically gave no news about it, 
and yet the organizing of the farmer hosts went 
steadily on and on, until now more than five 
millions of them are banded together for offensive 
and defensive political action. The daily journals 
buried all tidings of this mighty rural uprising 
from their readers, until the elections in the 
Western states last fall proved conclusively that 



THE COMING CLIMAX 211 

the "campaign of silence" was futile; a change of 
base on the part of over 100,000 republican 
farmer voters of Kansas could not be hidden. 
Then the plutocratic papers deliberately belittled 
and misrepresented the causes which led up to the 
event. After lifting the curtain a moment and 
letting their readers see the picture under the 
distorted light they cast upon it, the canvas was 
dropped again, and now the only tidings city 
readers get of this colossal movement of the 
tillers of the soil, is that it is dying out by rea- 
son of the good crops (which have mostly been 
absorbed by the Shylocks and speculators)where- 
as the actual fact is that the marshaling of the 
farmers is going on as never before; they are re- 
cruiting, mustering and drilling all over agricul- 
tural America, as unbelievers will find out when 
next year comes. It is observable that there has 
of late been a startling change of policy on the 
part of the plutocratic press toward the farmers. 
When they thought that these farmer societies 
would soon dissipate themselves and die out, no 
words were too honied for their use in speaking 
of the American agriculturist. He was an honest 
farmer, the bone and sinew of the nation, the 
friend of law and order, the sure hope of the 



218 THE COMING CLIMAX 

republic in time of disaster; and five years ago 
a millionaire said to the writer, "If these city 
workmen become turbulent we will bring the 
farmers up here and kill them off." We suggest 
Kansas as a good recruiting ground for this gen- 
tleman. 

But very recently all this adulation, admira- 
tion and fulsome panegyric has ceased. It is 
found that the farmers refuse to disband, but 
are mustering to fight the Triumphant Plutocracy 
at the ballot-box, and, oh, what vile and utterly 
naughty fellows these erstwhile charming tillers 
of the soil have become, and the columns of the 
plutocratic papers teem with slurs and insults 
leveled at them. And, what is more rasping and 
humiliating than all else, some of these immensely 
rich journals take a lofty and condescending 
tone, and give cheap Pecksniffian advice to the 
farmers, talking to them as if they were address- 
ing a lot of sullen ignoramuses or bad children 
who had no just idea as to their own rights or 
wrongs, but who as a matter of policy might 
first be coaxed before an attempt was made to 
drive them. 

Any one who is aware of the innate sensitive- 
ness of the American farmer to insult, ought to 



THE COMING CLIMAX 219 

know what the inevitable result of that course of 
treatment will be — 5,000,000 of them stand now 
at bay against the usurpation of the Triumphant 
Plutocracy. This ought to constitute a tolerably 
serious problem for our great middle class, and 
though the artful hoodwinking of the legal, 
clerical and editorial lackeys may hide it from 
sight, it is still there just the same, and full of 
menace to institutions that are now being run 
on unrighteous lines. 



CHAPTER XIII 

SYMPTOMS OF ORGANIC DISEASE 

"The want of serious and sustained thinking is not confined to politics. 
One feels it even more as regards economical and social questions. To 
it must be ascribed the vitality of certain prejudices and fallacies which 
could scarcely survive the continuous application of such vigorous minds 
as one finds among the Americans Their quick perceptions serve them 
so well in business, and in the ordinary affairs of private life, that they 
do not feel the need for minute investigation and patient reflection on 
the underlying principles of things. They are apt to ignore difficulties, 
and when they can no longer ignore them, they will evade them, rather 
than lay siege to them according to the rules of art.'' — [From "The 
American Commonwealth" by James Bryce, Member of Parliament. 

Prof. Bryce, from whom we quote, came over 
here a few years ago and made an exhaustive 
study of the American republic. He brought 
to the task a cultured mind, rare philosophical 
attainments, a thorough literary training and the 
skill of a practiced investigator in the realm of 
social and political phenomena. In essaying 
this toil it is not improbable that the distinguished 
English publicist had clearly in view the mas- 
terly work done by his great predecessor de 
Tocqueville in precisely the same field. A half 
century had passed since the eminent Frenchman 
gave the world his powerful and profound sum- 
ming up of the status of democracy in America, 
220 



THE COMING CLIMAX 221 

and what a half century it had been ! — there is 
none other comparable to it in the history of 
mankind. The United States had concentrated 
the ordinary growth and experiences of decades 
into years. It had lived its national life with un- 
exampled rapidity, and while in governmental 
externals it remained essentially the same as in 
1833 its social and economic body had undergone 
greater structural changes than came to that of 
the Roman republic during the hundreds of 
years between the death of Brutus and the rise 
of Constantine. Prof. Bryce found his task at 
a most happy season for the philosopher who 
would write instructively of America, for the 
benefit of coming generations of students and 
thinkers. The republic had already entered upon 
one of those climacteric periods of transition, 
which either bring in an era of larger and richer 
development, or else turn a nation decisively 
downward toward decay and dissolution. 

If de Tocqueville had been privileged to enjoy 
the opportunities so bounteously offered to Prof. 
Bryce, we may be sure that the political diagnos- 
tician whose genius foretold the French Revolu- 
tion of 1848 would have affirmed tremendous in- 
ternal potencies from the surface manifestations 



222 THE COMING CLIMAX 

which Prof. Bryce passed as inconsequential. 
Sixty years ago not a single constructive element, 
or formative force then present in the body of 
the republic, escaped the microscopic eye and 
definitive analysis of Monsieur de Tocqueville. 
He pointed out possible phases of combination 
between them, and indicated future results, until 
such time as the appearance of new and over- 
mastering powers might neutralize or divert their 
logical tendencies. As Benjamin Franklin could 
not foresee the changed character of civilization 
when under the then undiscovered applications 
of steam and electricity, so de Tocqueville failed 
to spy out the transforming agencies that were 
destined to intrude themselves into the complex 
life of the republic when the modern corpora- 
tion should rise like a malign colossus and take 
supreme rule in the nation. At the time of the 
French publicist's visit there was not even a hint 
of the germ out of which the most fantastical 
imagination could have called an air-drawn vision 
of our present Triumphant Plutocracy, but when 
the English publicist came, threescore years later, 
it had not only come into being but was in com- 
mand of the republic whose fundamental institu- 
tions it had well nigh subverted. And yet Prof. 



THE COMING CLIMAX 223 

Bryce saw it not, because he was dominated by 
the hereditary prepossessions of a well-born En- 
glishman in favor of the rule of the classes over 
the masses, while de Tocqueville, as a firm be- 
liever in the ultimate triumph of the democratic 
idea in human government, would naturally 
look sharply after evil conditions which might 
delay that sublime finality. 

Bryce deemed that representative government 
had done its perfect work when the landed, com- 
mercial and professional classes were made 
secure in all needed rights and privileges. De 
Tocqueville, on the other hand, would not have 
been content until the blessings of liberty and 
free institutions were extended to the lowliest 
toiler in the land. Prof. Bryce made his Ameri- 
can observation from the vantage ground of 
club-house windows and rich men's drawing- 
rooms, and it is not surprising that he wrote 
a work entirely pleasing to the plutocracy. He 
scored the political corruption that was rife in 
our muncipalities, state legislatures and national 
Congress; but that was nothing new, for the 
American people had long known the facts, had 
grown callous to their shame and seemed willing 
to patiently endure them for all future time. 



224 THE COMING CLIMAX 

The plutocrats who did not go into active politics 
themselves, at once laughed at and made use 
of official rascality for their own financial advan- 
tage. It was largely of their own creation, and 
they had sedulously fostered the rule of villainy 
in all departments of the government. Hence 
they were not sensitive to Prof. Bryce's criti- 
cism of agencies they themselves despised, so 
long as he did not turn his fire on the brigand 
charters and unholy franchises which were 
their special property. Prof. Bryce casually notes 
the fact of the existence of gigantic trusts, syn- 
dicates and corporations, but neither indicts 
them as unjust nor regards them as dangerous to 
the general prosperity of the republic. In one 
place he declares that we will have in fifty years 
more rich families than all Europe, yet denies 
that we will have a distinctively wealthy caste 
among us, although it was already here when he 
wrote. He put the perilous time of high eco- 
nomic pressure thirty years away, unknowing of 
the fact that it had already begun. He declares 
that there is no hatred between capital and labor, 
that we have neither classes nor masses, and that 
consequently social, political and economic rival 
schools of thought have vertical divisions that 



THE COMING CLIMAX 225 

cut down impartially through all grades of 
society, whereas a mere cursory investigation 
would have demonstrated a growing antagonism 
between the capitalists and producers, and that 
even while he was preparing his book for the 
press, the masses and the classes were being 
thrown into hostile armies on strictly horizontal 
lines by reason of an irreconcilable hostility of 
interests. 

Prof. Bryce makes incidental mention of the 
great Pittsburgh railway strike of 1877 and of the 
huge and devastating riot that took place in Cin- 
cinnati in 1884 in consequence of gross lapses in 
justice on the part of the courts of law. He does 
not even hint that these sudden and tremendous 
ebullitions of popular wrath arose from any cause 
whatsoever, and the only lesson he draws from 
them is that our government should arm itself 
with greater repressive powers. 

Prof. Bryce was rejoiced in by the plutocracy 
as an impartial and highly competent critic, who 
declared authoritatively that the plutocrats were 
essentially right on the main issue, and he fur- 
thermore delighted them by putting the evil day 
so far off that there was no danger of their being 
caught in the deluge. The quotation from Prof. 

'5 



226 THE COMING CLIMAX 

Bryce at the head of this chapter is a true gen- 
eralization, and though it may have been the 
result of unconscious cerebration on the part of 
his naturally philosophic mind, we none the less 
thank him heartily for it and shall make use of 
it as a text. 

Prof. Bryce remarks of us Americans: "They 
are apt to ignore difficulties, and when they can 
no longer ignore them, they will evade them, 
rather than lay siege to them according to the 
rules of art." The penetrative mind of our British 
commentator in this one sentence discovers the 
most dangerous defect in the national character, 
for the stupendous calamity of the civil war is 
directly traceable to a deliberate blinding of our 
eyes to the plainest evidence of threatened 
disaster, until the shock of actual combat, be- 
tween forces which had long been antagonistic, 
made all attempts at peaceful compromise utterly 
futile. Were our people chastened into wisdom 
by that trial? Are they more watchful of the 
republic's condition than before? Have they 
come into a clearer knowledge that states as 
well as men must pay a price for health, pros- 
perity and happiness? Do they look near and 
afar in search of the lurking foes from whose 



THE COMING CLIMAX 227 

assaults no living organism on this earth goes 
free? Do they realize a little more closely that 
it is always a march and a battle for both indi- 
viduals and nations, who would be secure in 
their progress toward better things? Have our 
people, under the stern lessons of a needless war, 
learned increased vigilance in guarding against 
danger? Have its wholesome teachings been 
taken into national economics, and do we now 
carefully see to it that the great house, in which 
we all must live, is made safe against the shock of 
driving storms and the pest of intruding vermin? 
Alas, for the republic, that we must in saddest 
truth say, no. Our people were not sobered into 
an anxious thoughtfulness by that Titanic con- 
flict. We did not thereby come into a national 
self-consciousness that takes rigid stock of itself 
in relation to an ever-changing environment. 
On the contrary the nation stepped briskly forth 
from the misery of that great struggle, and with 
the easy forgetfulness of youth, pushed the 
didactic quality out of every one of its memories. 
And why should they not when it was an accepted 
truism that the republic need have no fear save 
of foreign invasion or a forcible dissolution of 
the Union; and do not all men north and south 



228 THE COMING CLIMAX 

alike concede that never in the future would any 
state strive to break away? So all sang "Hail, 
Columbia, " and took joy in the glib prophets 
who told of the peace of a thousand years; and 
everybody fell to scrambling after money, that 
they might enjoy the delights of a truly blessed 
land to the uttermost. And all this time the pos- 
sible army of later Goths and Huns, predicted 
by Macaulay, were being born at the rate of five 
hundred a day, in the garrets and cellars of the 
great cities. This pleasant optimism became so 
set in the minds of our people, that they were 
intellectually incapable of accepting any contrary 
evidence. It was idle folly to waste time on 
proofs that went to demonstrate the probability 
of that which was manifestly impossible. The 
republic of America was henceforth and for- 
ever absolutely safe from any supreme peril, and 
no amount of testimony would, could or should 
prove the contrary. This fatuity of belief as 
to the happy good fortune of our republic has 
been noted by all observant foreigners. It was 
strong before the war, and is equally so to-day, 
for that appalling season of bloodshed and 
wreckage did not abate by one jot our utterly 
unreasoning confidence in a serene future, which 



THE COMING CLIMAX 229 

has no legitimate foundation and is solely due 
to an exaggerated national egotism, which has 
made us the laughing-stock of sensible men of 
other countries for the last hundred years. 

The United States stands to-day in danger of 
judgment and punishment for many sins. In 
the first place it has in practice denied all obliga- 
tions to the moral law, from which it follows that 
a national conscience would be an inconvenient 
possession. In its dealings with mankind it ac- 
knowledged no benevolent duties to humanity at 
large, but has been guided solely by the policies 
and expediencies that were serviceable to its 
self-interests; and now, behold! when the un- 
symmetrical and almost unnatural growth of 
the republic has differentiated a ruling class com- 
posed of the enormously rich, these oligarchs 
turn to and greedily make spoil of the common 
working people of their own land. This act is but 
the true logic of atheism applied to human gov- 
ernment. It is merely the natural right of the 
strong fellows to take everything they can get 
their clutches on. 

England has gone foraging over the world 
bearing the devil gospel of supply and demand 



230 THE COMING CLIMAX 

which goes with a godless commercialism. It 
has seized upon weaker peoples with a brutal 
hand and made them its industrial serfs. It 
forced the blasting curse of the opium traffic on 
China at the cannon's mouth, and always and ever 
has it proved itself the great pirate nation of the 
ages, and shall so stand in the future chronicles 
of mankind. Its moral civilization is infinitely 
below that of the Roman empire, for while 
Rome extended her dominion over alien nations 
with commanding power, she secured the tran- 
quility of conquered peoples, by the sound 
policy of justice which gave them prosperity and 
content. Rome levied a general tax on her con- 
quests, but otherwise allowed internal affairs 
to go on unchanged. 

England holds down her tributary vassals by 
military force, and as in the case of India, not only 
taxes them enormously but turns over their most 
lucrative trade into the hands of a locust swarm 
of her devouring merchants. England never 
does any good to a conquered people except by 
accident, because she wants all the good there 
is for herself. 

In the case of the industrial classes of her own 
island, England has always been a ferocious 



THE COMING CLIMAX 231 

tyrant. She held them as slaves until the slow 
but unrelenting pressure of unseen forces un- 
locked her iron hand. Every concession of 
natural rights to them as human beings has 
been fought most virulently by the crown, the 
nobility and wealthy classes; but still God's 
evolutionary law that has decreed the uplifting 
of humanity will not be denied, but continues 
to make way, though all the powers of hell are 
ranged against it. 

British commercial and governmental ethics 
are those of America, for our republic is domi- 
nated by the same masterful and ruthless Anglo- 
Saxon blood and we have given it expression 
wherever possible. We have done so most in- 
famously in our unvaryingly unjust treatment of 
the Indians, and England did not seize her 
oriental colonies with a more lawless disregard 
of a righteous international code, than the 
United States displayed in securing the forcible 
cession of an empire from Mexico. When the 
present era of high economic pressure came upon 
our republic, and the producers strove to arrest 
the remorseless tendency which was steadily 
pushing them down-hill to pauperdom, how did 
our republican government meet the emer- 



232 THE COMING CLIMAX 

gency? It met it precisely after the manner 
of England. It strove to dodge the issue, and 
ignored the legitimate ground for complaint on 
the part of the working people. It would not 
wisely and humanely search out for causes which 
might be remedied by patriotic legislation backed 
up by Christian public opinion. Such just and 
enlightened action was beyond its capabilities, 
and it promptly turned to the oppressors' armory 
for weapons to crush a cause of right which God 
stood behind. Its subtle attorneys passed anti- 
boycotting and anti-conspiracy statutes, with 
the intent of making the most peaceful combina- 
tions of workingmen illegal by grace of bastard 
laws that shamelessly violated the fundamental 
principles upon which the republic was founded. 
Pinkerton thugs were recruited, armed, drilled 
and disciplined, the national guards were mobil- 
ized under United States army officers, fortresses 
were erected in all our great cities, and the reg- 
ular army was moved in from the frontiers and 
quartered near the great centers of population, 
and the Triumphant Plutocracy rejoiced in its 
possession of the land and said: " We are so great 
and strong that we can trample on man's rights 
and God's justice, and our omnipotent decree has 



THE COMING CLIMAX 233 

gone forth that human progress shall stop in the 
American republic, and we shall prove by abso- 
lute demonstration that the rule of the Almighty 
in the universe is a myth, and we shall rear 
golden idols to force and craft, for by these 
potencies the strong shall continue to bind the 
weaker until the world runs down and the prac- 
tical joke of human life plays itself out to be no 
more forever." 

It is far cry from the New England town meet- 
ing of a hundred years ago, to a Tammany Hall 
primary of to-day, and the difference between 
the civic virtue of the one and the shameless 
vice of the other gives an exact measure of the 
political degeneracy of the republic from the 
pure ideal of the fathers. The organization of 
this republic was broadly democratic, the town- 
ship was the unit, the citizens came together en 
masse and discussed ways and means for the com- 
mon good. Small groups of these units formed 
the county, larger ones the state, and an aggre- 
gate of all made the nation. Under the old 
regime, when the country was sparsely settled, 
when the people were poor and patriotic, when 
every man could feel his touch on the mechanism 



234 THE COMING CLIMAX 

of organized society, when public opinion was 
a substantial entity and not as now a mere phan- 
tasm, the actual democratic fact in the govern- 
ment of the country was neither perverted, trans- 
formed nor alloyed by its various extensions, from 
the town hall to the capitol of the republic. In 
all the larger expressions of the township, the 
government remained truly representative and 
hence was rigidly democratic. To give the 
democratic idea beneficent vitality, several con- 
ditions must blend into harmonious unity. A 
clear majority of the people must be honest, 
moral, intelligent and hence naturally desirous 
of good government. To these factors another 
very essential quantity must be added, and that 
is, every good man must loyally perform all his 
duties as a good citizen. This is the motive power 
in the efficient rule of a democracy, and without it 
the virtue and purity of the majority of individual 
citizens become mere dead timber. For if these 
valuable elements remain passive, nothing can 
prevent a bold, alert and corrupt minority from 
rushing a republic down hill to destruction. And 
this is precisely what is being done in our coun- 
try to-day. There probably was never a larger 
percentage of worthy and honorable citizens in 



THE COMING CLIMAX 235 

the nation than at the present time, but never 
in the history of the country did this most re- 
spectable class exercise so little actual influence 
in the government. They are merely passen- 
gers, and do next to nothing in directing the 
affairs of the republic. This condition of peril- 
ous inertia has come to pass from a variety of 
causes, the principal one being a general ab- 
sorption of the more intelligent class in money- 
getting. Our well-to-do people have demands 
upon their time through business and social 
avenues that their grandfathers knew nothing 
about, and the margin left for thought and serv- 
ice on behalf of the state is very narrow indeed, 
conceding that they are anxious to do their duty 
to organized society, which unfortunately they 
are not. While divers subtracting agencies were 
stealthily sapping the power of the virtuous 
majority in the rule of the republic, the old 
status of our governmental mechanism was being 
so changed that the task of the citizen who would 
do his duty to his country became five-fold more 
onerous. The difference in the energy required 
in this particular, fifty years ago and now, was 
about equivalent to that exacted from a team in 
drawing on a level macadamized highway, and 



236 tHE COMINC CLIMAk 

then in dragging a vehicle through a bog. This 
came about from two reasons: first, because our 
present governmental methods for the nation at 
large were adjusted to times when it took sev- 
eral weeks to go from Boston to Philadelphia; 
then biennial congressional and quadrennial 
presidential elections served the needs of the 
people very well, for pressing issues demanding 
prompt solution rarely intruded themselves with 
suddenness, and if they did the legislator was 
nearer to the reach of the people than he is to- 
day, and on emergency far more hands reached 
out to compel him, than are visible on such oc- 
casions now. At the present time the rush of 
affairs is so rapid that a Congressman can be 
elected to legislate on questions that are pushed 
into the background before he takes his seat, by 
recent and far more insistent ones, to whose 
definite handling he has made no pledges; hence 
the law-maker in many cases is emancipated from 
a positive responsibility to his constituents, and 
can guide his actions from the standpoint of per- 
sonal interest. Thus the average citizen has come 
to know his impotence, and feels that the sub- 
stance of his power in the government of the re- 
public has largely passed from him, and he there- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 237 

fore lightly regards the vote that stands for it. 
Supplementary to and completing the practical 
disfranchisement of the good citizen, is the van- 
ishment of the township as a unit of power in 
the republic ; for while it still exists in the rural 
districts with all its old-time virility, its influ- 
ence in the nation is neutralized by the city 
primary, which is no more like it than a street- 
bawd is like a Sister of Charity. The honest 
township meeting becomes impossible in all 
large cities, and lapses at once into the brawling 
ward primary, with the worst elements of society 
in the front, under the leadership of corrupt 
professional politicians. Thus is the old mechan- 
ism destroyed by which the democratic idea 
purely and promptly expressed itself, and repub- 
lican institutions as a veritable fact pass away 
under the malign workings of a political machine 
that is sold out to the Triumphant Plutocracy, 
who use it to make spoil of the liberties and 
prosperity of the people. Whereas once the aver- 
age good man had all his potentialities as a citi- 
zen in possession and could make himself felt in 
the government of the country, these functions 
have now well-nigh atrophied by reason of non- 
use; his voice is unheard, his hands are mana- 



238 THE COMING CLIMAX 

cled, and he completes the job of reducing him- 
self to a political nonentity, by closing his eyes 
and sealing his ears, so that he may be bliss- 
fully ignorant of the wrong that is taking place, 
and hence personally happy and content while 
the republic is going to the dogs. We now find 
the ordinary American busy at his money-mak- 
ing and taking his good pleasure. He shuts out 
all sinister tokens that a grave crisis is near at 
hand, because of a dreary sense of his incapacity 
to avert the menacing evils, so he gladly shelters 
himself within a fatalism that blends the gloomy 
philosophy of inexorable destiny with the serene 
trust of the Christian, who thinks that under 
God's benignant care the threatening perils shall 
pass by and work no harm. This intellectual 
attitude toward his nation's future has warrant 
by reason of the outlook whence he peers inquir- 
ingly into his own. For plan it the best he may, 
there is always between him and the inevitable 
grave a vast and undefined territory that is ever 
mantled in mist. His course lies through it, but 
never for a single pace ahead can he hold him- 
self secure from sudden calamity; at any 
moment it may fall upon him and the warm 
hope and cheery joy of life shall be his no more 



THE COMING CLIMAX 239 

forever. It is not strange that the atheist should 
fail to give a large concern to the possible catas- 
trophes that may befall his country, when under 
the despairing consciousness that he himself is but 
the helpless toy of blind force and iron circum- 
stances. But there is no such excuse for the 
citizen who believes in God, and holds faith in 
immortality, for unto him hath the Father given 
rich revelation. To him hath come supernal 
assurance that the Almighty asks not impossi- 
bilities of his mortal children, for when they 
have shaped their lives in accord with his imper- 
ishable moralities and wisely used their physical 
powers and intellectual faculties for their own 
and other's betterment, he gives unto them 
peace and happiness in the present, and banishes 
all horror of an unknown future. 

It is right at this point that our good citizens 
are grossly derelict in their plain duties to the 
country at large, and that is why our republic is 
now rapidly nearing its supreme tragedy. Every 
man who makes a moral and material success of 
life has fixed principles of action and a large 
general plan, but means and methods he must 
continually modify, for we live in a world of 
ceaseless change. He must know of a verity 



240 THE COMING CLIMAX 

that truth, justice and charity are eternal land- 
marks set by the Almighty for the guidance of 
humanity, and he who beats against them with 
outlaw hand, goeth to his death. The man 
who would fare truly toward the best of earth 
and heaven, must be constantly making new 
adjustments of his course. Blunder he will, but 
he must be prompt to rectify mistakes. Bad 
judgment he will show, but the disastrous event 
must bring him to wiser action. He must be 
perpetually watchful if he would guard well his 
health and prosperity, because foes are all around 
and about from the cradle to the grave. Mark 
the wise man, how he protects his physical well- 
being, his character and worldly store. They 
are constantly in his anxious thought. What is 
the nation but an aggregation and summing up 
of every force and quality in the possession of all 
its citizens? There can be no exception offered 
to this statement that a wise and just man will 
not reject at once. The individualist denies it, 
but the individualist stands in society for that 
disintegrating force, which everywhere opposes 
the constructive energy of the universe ; and we 
can trace its handiwork through all the grada- 
tions of destructiveness, from that of the bac- 
teria to that of Beelzebub. 



THE COMING CLIMAX 241 

The gravitation of the higher orders of man- 
kind toward closer association and a more abso- 
lute collectivity of interest is now clearly manifest 
to every mind competent to investigate social 
phenomena. The nation truly considered must be 
looked at as a larger man of indefinite length of 
days, who unites in himself all the complex 
capabilities of the individual atoms of men who 
make up its body ; therefore it follows that our 
republic should have a wise plan of life that is 
under the guidance of rules of conduct that are 
sound in policy and righteous in morals, to- 
gether with a flexibility of governmental methods 
that can be promptly adjusted to all new needs 
that arise in the growth and progress of the state. 
Until these conditions become accomplished 
facts, we can have no abiding assurance of peace 
and prosperity. The generation immediately 
succeeding that of the revolutionary fathers was 
profoundly reverent of them and their great 
work, and regarded the governmental system 
which they constructed as not only sacred but all- 
sufficient. It was looked upon as a providentially 
devised piece of mechanism, of so perfect and 
enduring a character, that it could go on grinding 

out unmixed blessings for countless generations 
16 



242 THE COMING CLIMAX 

of happy Americans without standing in need of 
any essential repairs or additions. This pleasing 
superstition was handed down from father to son, 
and despite an enormous quantity of contrary 
evidence, has millions of confiding believers to- 
day. 

The Triumphant Plutocracy, with their custo- 
mary shrewdness in using any and all agencies 
that minister to their lust for power and gold, 
did not neglect the hereditary reverence of our 
people for the order of things established by the 
revolutionary patriots. Hence all invasions on 
the rights and prosperity of the masses have been 
made on lines that preserved a formal respect for 
the honored institutions of the republic, although 
at the very time of their lip-service veneration 
the plutocrats might be scoffing at them by their 
lawless deeds. 

How this brazen-faced play-acting brings up 
parallel instances in the history of old Rome ! 
Again we see the military idol of the legions 
stand in mock humility before a trembling senate 
and give bogus thanks for their title of Imperator, 
although his mailed hand had long before seized 
the full substance of despotic authority. The plu- 
tocrats are bound to have law on their side even if 



THE COMING CLIMAX 243 

they have to buy it, and they defy all question of 
their brigand charters with legal decisions that 
venal judges furnish as per contract. But let a 
long-suffering people ask for reforms in govern- 
mental polity that are urgently required by their 
hard necessities, and though they be obviously 
righteous and reasonable, yet will the plutocrats 
at once denounce the relief they demand as 
heterodox and revolutionary. And lo, the past 
lives again under a new incarnation, and as it 
was in the days of the Slaveocracy, so is it now 
under the Plutocracy. And the higher law of 
God again declares that the oppressed shall go 
free. And again does the lower law of man sac- 
rilegiously bar the way. Which shall triumph, 
think ye? Go back to the spring of 1865 and 
find your answer, for the wicked shall not prevail 
over the will of the Almighty master of men. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE GANGRENE OF DISSOLUTION 

" Rulers, who neither see, nor feel, nor know. 

But leech-like to their fainting country cling, 
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow; 

A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field, 
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay; 

Religion Christless, Godless — a book sealed; 

A senate — Time's worst statute unrepealed — 
Are graves from which a glorious phantom may 
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day." 

— [Percy By s she Shelley, 

In the last seventy years the inventor has 
transformed the material life of the nation. 
Time and labor saving appliances have multi- 
plied almost beyond calculation. The commer- 
cial, industrial, and scientific status of three 
generations ago has practically passed away, and 
we live in another and infinitely advanced social 
economic state from that of our grandfathers. 

Now please make search in the department 
of political science for improved devices that 
correspond in importance with the handiwork 
of Fulton, Whitney, Jethro Wood, Morse, Howe 
and Edison, and lo, you find them not. If there 
had been no more progress in applied economics 
244 



THE COMING CLIMAX 245 

than in applied politics, our condition in the 
last decade of the nineteenth century would be 
practically the same as in the first, with flint-lock 
muskets, wooden mold-board plows, the hand- 
loom, home-spun clothes, farmers taking their 
grist to mill, and a six weeks' journey from the 
valley of the Connecticut to the valley of the 
Ohio. 

To deny the need of improved appliances in 
our governmental methods, is to affirm that the 
republic is already perfect. It is the same as 
declaring that political corruption, the evil power 
of wealth in the courts and the deep complaints 
of millions of wealth-creators exist only as phan- 
tasms in the minds of visionary reformers, while 
to recognize the fact of these wrongs in the re- 
public is to prove long-continued neglect of duty 
on the part of law-makers and people alike. It 
is either this or we must adopt the pessimistic 
belief which of late has been rife, that humanity 
is so debased that to erect a righteous and effi- 
cient system of government is beyond its power, 
because the stream cannot rise higher than its 
fountain. 

The truth of the matter is, we have made 
locomotives, reapers, sewing-machines and tele- 



246 THE COMING CLIMAX 

phones, that work perfectly up to their planning, 
because great inventors threw all their energies 
into the task, being invited thereto by the hope 
of large pecuniary reward. But no wage of 
golden millions waited the successful experi- 
menter who might discover the most beneficent 
improvements in governmental mechanism. 

The steel mold-board plow, the cotton-gin 
and locomotive made swift demonstration of 
their substantial advantage to the whole body of 
society, and the humblest citizen could note his 
share therein, while the profit from improved 
governmental methods must ever remain vague 
and unsubstantial to legislator and voter alike, 
when considered only from the material stand- 
point. When the several colonies ratified the con- 
stitution and the United States stood forth as a 
nation, it was not unnatural that the architects 
of the republic should think that here at last 
was the sublime finality in human government 
for which the world had been waiting since the 
morning of time. This was pardonable egotism 
and characteristic of all builders. The convic- 
tion had an enduring groundwork of facts behind 
it, for the grand principles of universal equity 
upon which the American democracy was founded 



THE COMING CLIMAX 247 

cannot be improved upon, any more than new 
qualities of virtue can be added to abstract jus- 
tice and charity. Thus it came about with our 
system of government, as frequently happens 
with systems of religion; and visible forms, 
symbols and methods became identified in the 
minds of men with the sacred invisible soul to 
whom they were but passing conveniences, while 
they should be changed as are the priestly vest- 
ments, when out-worn by the wrack and fray of 
time. 

That gifted body of statesmen who made our 
revolutionary epoch forever illustrious would 
have promptly devised new methods to give the 
democratic idea unhampered expression, so soon 
as they saw that new needs had arisen out of the 
growth and development of the country, which 
rendered improved appliances of government 
absolutely necessary, but those grand artificers 
went the way of earth and we now vainly look 
for their lineal successors. Of late years our 
country has been denied harmonious govern- 
mental development by a race of mediocre states- 
men, who were destitute of true constructive 
genius and had no knowledge that it was their 
high mission to serve as aids to that evolutionary 



248 THE COMING CLIMAX 

force which strives after perfection in the case 
of nations, by pushing them into the use of func- 
tions that become ever more complex as they 
rise into loftier and larger spheres of being. If 
the rulers of the republic had been swift to see 
the need of modification in political methods as 
the nation grew out of the sparse population and 
crude conditions of the early times, we could now 
have a full expression of national opinion on pub- 
lic questions of instant interest, once a month if 
need be, and involving no more trouble to the 
average citizen than is required to write and mail 
a short business note. Our postoffice department 
has all the needed mechanism for this work, 
and the cost and trouble would not be a tithe of 
that yearly invested by the Associated Press in 
gathering the news of the country. But no such 
wise reform was ever attempted, because the 
mass of the people acquiesced in the unchanging 
status of the republic, and the political barnacles 
would not suggest any change that might mayhap 
interfere with franchises which they found en- 
tirely satisfactory. So by reason of the anti- 
quated cumbrousness of our political mechanism 
and the impossibility of the middle-class man 
doing his duty as a citizen through it, without a 



THE COMING CLIMAX 249 

degree of sacrifice and toil that he declined to 
give, the professional politician has come to the 
front, and rules the country by his brigand code of 
ethics; and as the praetorian guard sold the Im- 
perial purple to the highest bidder, so does the 
profligate league of machine politicians barter 
away the liberties and prosperity of the republic 
for plutocratic gold. 

Prof. Bryce says of us: "The state of mind of 
the average citizen is a state rather of lassitude 
than of callousness. " A possible degeneracy is 
just as true of human nature as a possible ad- 
vancement, and how long does it take for lassitude 
in the presence of wrong to lapse into callous 
indifference to it? The familiar stanza of Pope 
says: 

"Vice is a monster of so hideous mien 
That to be hated needs but to be seen, 
Yet seen too oft, familiar with its face, 
We first endure, then pity, then embrace." 

These lines receive general acceptance among 
the intelligent as the true statement of a progress- 
ive tendency in mankind, which may go up to 
supernal heights, but goes down to an inexpress- 
ible bog-wallow of animalism far easier. We 
speak of civic duties, social duties and moral 
duties. At their last analysis are not all duties 



250 THE COMING CLIMAX 

moral ones? Can they be anything else, when 
every duty rightly considered has for its end the 
fulfillment of the law of righteousness for man 
in all his complex relations with life? 

It is impossible to divorce a citizen's political 
duties from his distinctively moral relations to 
himself, his family and his fellow men. His 
duties in their entirety form one body, and he 
can no more place one set apart from all the 
others, than he can make the function of diges- 
tion independent from his physical organism, so 
that it shall have no bearing on his general 
health. 

The average American citizen in recent 
years has come to think he can safely ignore 
his political duties, and hence the appalling 
condition of the country to-day. He has 
come to regard it as his first duty to look out 
for number one financially, and per con- 
sequence his obligations as a citizen have 
merely a nominal hold on him. He has got on 
in the world personally in the face of active com- 
petition, and it is quite natural for him to regard 
a " devil-take-the-hindmost" order of society very 
leniently. He will concede you that it is by no 
means an ideal state, but then people do not 



THE COMING CLIMAX 251 

take as much stock in ideals as they did when the 
republic was younger. The golden age does 
not seem as near to us as it did to the fervid 
patriots of a hundred years ago, who had no 
sooner passed the first hot rejoicings attendant 
on their own successful revolution, than they 
were thrown into fresh raptures by the brave 
news that came across the sea of a French up- 
rising in which the down-trodden masses had 
toppled over the tyranny of a thousand years. 
The American of 1791 was an exultant optimist, 
and saw mirrored in the heavens the glorious 
mirage of an enchanted land, which lay only a 
few marches ahead. The American of 1891 is a 
faithless pessimist, who keeps his eyes fixed on 
the earth in search of treasure that has real sub- 
stance to it, and gives scant belief to anything 
which cannot be carried to market and sold for 
a price. 

An occurrence took place the other day in the 
far south-west of our republic that sums up and 
gives sinister manifestation of the altogether 
dominant and superlatively malignant forces that 
are now hurrying our country rapidly onward 
toward a just judgment and its inexorable pen- 



252 THE COMING CLIMAX 

alty. Thirty thousand landless and home-hungry 
people assembled along the border of a stretch 
of virgin territory that was to be thrown open for 
pre-emption and settlement when the clock regis- 
tered high noon. This section of unoccupied soil 
was about the last strip remaining to a govern- 
ment that had been so exceedingly paternal to 
cliques of railway millionaires that it made them 
a free gift of several hundred thousand square 
miles of the richest land on the face of the earth. 
So, forsooth, it must needs show an equal benevo- 
lence to millions of brawny toilers who did not 
own in fee simple patches of ground big enough 
to make them graves. To be sure a few hun- 
dred square miles of dubious soil, in a section 
which the old geographies located near the mid- 
dle of the great American desert, was not much 
among so many, but still all citizens were in- 
vited to this prodigious Barmecide feast. It was 
open to all comers, from the pine forests of 
Maine to the sand dunes of Southern California. 
And so they gathered themselves, to the number 
of thirty thousand, and waited the signal hour 
for the grand rush. You see the rushing for place 
came about because there was only one home- 
stead to every ten persons, so nine must perforce 



THE COMING CLIMAX 253 

go without. And the thirty thousand home- 
seekers, who had bivouacked in the open air for 
days before, rose betimes on the fateful morning 
and made hasty toilet by merely shaking the sand 
and shreds of grass from off their garments, and 
then hied them to the border and peered wist- 
fully over into the promised land. They had 
sore limbs, empty pockets, anxious hearts and 
hungry stomachs, but a hunger for broad acres 
they might call their own made all other afflic- 
tions light. 

The hands marked twelve o'clock, and then 
took place that which would make demons laugh 
and saints groan with horror. Thirty thousand 
men and women began their fierce race across 
the border. The human stream followed the 
lines of least resistance, and thus choked itself 
into narrow passes that made the most available 
gateways into Beulah land. Horsemen, footmen 
and teams crushed, crowded, struggled and 
fought with the ferocity of tigers. The track 
of the terrible flood was marked by the maimed, 
dying and dead. 

If the pagan damned in Tartarus had marked 
a chance-opened portal that led to the unfading 
delights of the gods, they could not have sprung 



254 THE COMING CLIMAX 

toward it with more utter forgetfulness of all 
else, than was shown by these American citi- 
zens in the quest for a bit of home land. Pity 
was not ; kindly feeling was not ; mercy, charity, 
brotherly helpfulness were not; all the tender 
graces that lift the man above the brute were not. 
All the devils of human nature which all the 
religions of all ages have tirelessly striven to 
chain down, were turned loose by a paternal 
government which practices the gospel of the 
"survival of the fittest," and never were the pe- 
culiar tenets of that atheistic creed more fittingly 
shown forth. Every orthodox plutocrat would 
have gloated over the sight. Here was an abso- 
lutely unrestricted field for its play. Individual 
strength, rapacity and cruelty could, for the 
nonce, work their free will unchecked by either 
the laws of God or man. The paternal United 
States cheerfully said: "There is a prize over 
there beyond the horizon line for one in every ten 
of you. Start even on the border, and may the 
fleetest, biggest, craftiest and most brutal scoun- 
drels among you win, for then the end will be en- 
tirely in accord with our governmental polity." 

Waterhouse Hawkins, the naturalist, could 
pick up in a museum a section of bone from 



THE COMING CLIMAX 255 

an extinct species of mammalia, and immediately 
sketch off on a blackboard the shape, size and 
proportions of the animal as in life. Thus if 
five thousand years hence the only record that 
remained of our high-vaunting American civili- 
zation of the last decade of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, were the chronicle of this late Indian Terri- 
tory anarchism, the enlightened sociologist of 
that far time, knowing that this atrocity came 
to pass under governmental supervision, would 
mark us down for a race of moral savages, and 
he would be right. If, on the other hand, the 
philosopher of the days that are to be, had a full 
knowledge of the material and intellectual tri- 
umphs of our civilization, and was entirely aware 
of the magnitude and influence of our Christian 
churches, he would not only reaffirm his original 
judgment of us but would add deeper condem- 
nation unto it. The massive roads, sculptured 
relics and splendid ruins of Rome, which testify 
so positively to her ancient grandeur, are given 
an infernal shading by the coliseum and the mem- 
ory of its bloody uses. The supreme fact in the 
life of that dead empire was the satanic cruelty 
of her people, and this shall survive when all 
others have become the wreck of time. 



256 THE COMING CLIMAX 

We make this western-territory incident em- 
phatic because, like the livid blotch of leprosy, 
it indicates of itself alone that an awful disease 
is already in full possession of our body politic. 
While that fierce mob of the land-hungry rushed 
furiously across the border in search of their 
rightful share in that beautiful earth which God 
made for the equal use of all men, the United 
States government, which esteems property 
above humanity and holds title deeds as more 
sacred than immortal souls, continued to pursue 
its aristocratic policy, which succors the classes 
and devastates the masses. Hundreds of mill- 
ions of unplowed acres of American soil lie fal- 
low year after year, though the gentle rains and 
fructifying sunshine ceaselessly invite them to 
produce for the good of the world. And poor 
men with strong hands that are ready for toil 
stand idly in the presence of a tantalizing oppor- 
tunity which the evil laws of a bogus republic 
deny them. These willing workers cannot go on 
that land and make it bring forth rich increase 
for the fullness and satisfaction of a hungry and 
suffering humanity, because, forsooth, the United 
States, through its bribed officials, has either 
given it away to railway corporations, or suf- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 257 

fered it to be bought up by millionaires, English 
lords and syndicates of speculators, who are rich 
enough to hold it out of use, till such a time as 
the increase of population, with its ever-grow- 
ing need of more land, shall make the "unearned 
increment" of enormous value; then these greedy 
and utterly soulless landlords, who are profes- 
sional idlers, will sell at a twenty-fold advance 
to the men who are glad of a chance to work 
for a living. It is a beautiful order of society 
which permits such a palpable outrage on lowly 
humanity, and yet it is done under a republic 
which was founded on the democratic idea of a 
government of the people, by the people and for 
the people, and which must be shamefully false 
to its sublime mission, when it fails to so adjust 
its laws as to do the greatest possible good to 
the greatest possible number of its people. But 
any suggestion of righteous reform in our diabol- 
ical land system, is met with the cry, " Revolu- 
tion, " "Anarchy," "They are going to tear down 
Christian civilization." Chattel slavery was 
never more infamously criminal than is this 
iniquitous system by which the title of the nat- 
ural heritage of all the people is vested in rich 
drones who only use it as an enginery of spolia- 
'7 



258 THE COMING CLIMAX 

tion and oppression. This is but human bondage 
under another form. It should be abolished, and 
we warn the plutocrats to beware of barring the 
way to its being peacefully put aside. This 
monstrous shame to our republic should be 
crushed out of existence, if in order to do so it 
becomes necessary to levy a yearly tax of fifty 
dollars per acre, on the land holdings of English 
lords, railway corporations and ravenous syndi- 
cates. This would bring a prompt reversion to 
the people of a fertile empire which is now held 
idle by the infernal necromancy of the Triumph- 
ant Plutocracy. 

God speed the happy day. 

This Oklahoma diabolism is by no means the 
only external token of the nation's internal dis- 
ease, for if we look closely and peel off the journal- 
istic paint and enamel with which our newspaper 
Madam Rachels strive to cover every pustule 
and ulcer, a most horrible condition of affairs 
will be disclosed. Like the insidious approach of 
death to the consumptive, our state of crisis has 
come on so gradually that a specious seeming of 
health has beguiled us of a true realization of 
the actual facts in the case. 



THE COMING CLIMAX 259 

Four-fifths of the reading space in our daily 
newspapers is devoted to chronicling base-ball 
items, horse-racing, prize-fighting, grain and 
stock gambling, social goings-on, murders, rob- 
beries, defalcations and scandalous escapades. 
What a wonderful people we are, and so full 
of life ! Surely there can be no hint of wasting 
disease and death in a body gifted with these 
tremendous activities! 

It is said that while the "Reign of Terror" 
was mowing down its victims by the thousands, 
the hundred theaters of Paris were crowded 
nightly ; and during the German siege of that city 
some twenty years ago, Labouchere, the English 
editor, found French citizens tranquilly fishing in 
a sequestered nook of the Seine, all unmindful of 
Von Moltke's shells that were howling through 
the air less than a mile away. Which only goes 
to show that our human nature is a queer com- 
pound, and its acts and attitudes cannot be intel- 
ligently accounted for at all times. So let us not 
take it for granted that our republic is safe and 
happy because the people thereof chance to be 
afflicted with lassitude, callousness and a general 
indifference to all signs of impending calamity. 

It is said that when a man of healthy body, 



260 THE COMING CLIMAX 

good habits and sound moral training takes to 
dissolute courses, he rushes down hill to irreme- 
diable catastrophe far quicker than one born in 
and accustomed to a vicious environment. This 
is because he has suddenly changed his habitat 
and order of being to a lower plane of life, which 
always is a perilous proceeding, for new adjust- 
ments must be made before the organism be- 
comes reconciled to the abnormal. It is similar 
to the habitual user of noxious drugs, whose 
physical system is finally made over by the 
poison and enjoys thereafter temporary security 
in a death-in-life existence. 

This is substantially the situation of our nation 
to-day, and hence the perils that beset it. A 
loftier and more virtuous system of government 
was never conceived by the human mind than that 
constructed by the patriot fathers of the repub- 
lic. Its entire mechanism was devised solely for 
the production of righteous and equal laws, im- 
partial courts of justice, pure officials and honest 
administration. It was built to serve the in- 
terests of all the people, high and humble, rich 
and poor, without any discrimination whatsoever. 
This kind of a government was a true incarna- 
tion of the democratic idea, and if its primal rec- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 261 

titude of plan had been lived up to, the produc- 
ing masses of the nation would now be in an 
ideal condition of prosperity, happiness and 
moral and intellectual cultivation. Discontent 
with industrial conditions and distrust of the gov- 
erning powers would be alike unknown; peace 
would be everywhere and the very thought of 
national peril an impossibility. How could it 
be otherwise, with a rich continent, an energetic 
people, an abundance of mechanical appliances, 
an equitable system for the distribution of the 
wealth created, and not a shadow of danger from 
foreign foes? But, unfortunately for us and all, 
the United States outlawed itself from its high 
estate and became a conscienceless profligate. It 
took to legislating the wealth of the masses into 
the hands of the classes. Slowly but surely all 
the functions of government passed under the 
control of a Triumphant Plutocracy, whose ma- 
leficent growth was due to criminal neglect and 
passive toleration on the part of the republic. 
Plutocratic gold dominated our courts of law, 
until poor plaintiffs against it were pushed out of 
doors. Its most subservient attorneys were 
made judges. Municipal, county, state and 
national legislative bodies, all without exception 



262 THE COMING CLIMAX 

were corrupted by it and abjectly obeyed its will. 
The greed and lawlessness of the Triumphant 
Plutocracy, coupled with its unparalleled suc- 
cess, have had a blasting effect on the moral sen- 
sibilities of our people. Its influence has spread 
abroad like a withering malaria; it has invaded 
all the social and business relations of men with 
its brigand code of ethics. "Get gold, and all 
other things shall be added unto you," is its 
latest gospel, imported direct from devildom. 
Victorious crime makes its own justification, 
and it is not only respectable but fashionable 
and aristocratic as well. 

A couple of hundred years ago, and Port Royal 
in the West Indies was the metropolis, mart 
and city of recreation, for all the pirates and 
buccaneers that swarmed the western ocean. 
These gentlemen of the black flag gave the com- 
munity its orthodox social and business stand- 
ards. In that city simple honesty was voted so 
cheap and vulgar that it could only co-exist with 
the densest stupidity, for all the bright people 
were looking out for number one in every way 
that cunning could suggest. The American re- 
public to-day, in its commercial and political 



THE COMING CLIMAX 263 

aspect, is merely a vastly larger and wealthier 
presentation of that vanished Port Royal whose 
demoniac inhabitants long since went back to 
their native Hades. Men trading with one 
another do so behind smirking masks. It is 
expected that every one will take the better of 
his fellow if he has a chance. That is how we get 
on in the world now-a-days. It is the apothe- 
osis of free competition unchecked by moral 
considerations. It is observable that in the last 
twenty years our men of affairs have become 
Italianized; the old blunt American frankness 
and straightforwardness of dealing are gone. 
Their manners are sinuous and ingratiating. 
Voices have become soft and flexible, but a new 
and remorseless purpose gleams coldly out of 
their eyes. The unrelenting will of the man has 
strengthened ten-fold; the hand of steel is well 
concealed in the glove of velvet, but it has got 
such power as never before. His eyes are fixed 
on millions of gold, and woe betide that which 
bars the way. Social conventionalisms were never 
more respected, because they do not interfere 
with the profitable prosecution of business. It is 
the bandit chief taking off his hat to a coach-load 
of captured passengers, and begging the ladies 



264 THE COMING CLIMAX 

and gentlemen to disburden themselves of their 
inconvenient valuables. And thus the coal-baron 
in the softest and silkiest tones mildly orders the 
closing of a mine that brings thousands to the 
verge of starvation, or gently requests the Pink- 
erton captain to shoot down a few dozen mur- 
muring workingmen. Proprieties are everything 
and principles nothing. The just man who takes 
a tour through a prison in these times, and marks 
the poverty-stricken and ignorant ruffians, whose 
lack of shrewdness, influence and gold is mainly 
responsible for their being there, finds his 
thoughts of condemnation fading from his mind, 
when he reflects on the far larger and more de- 
structive villains, who continue to ravage outside 
of the walls, both without fear of and utterly un- 
molested by the law, because, forsooth, they domi- 
nate it. The monumental enormities perpetrated 
on a suffering people, by our great corporations, 
trusts and millionaires, make the depredations of 
the so-called criminal classes dwindle into the 
insignificant. The wonderful hundred years 
illuminated by the peaceful and powerful reign of 
Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus 
Aurelius, was the final century of Rome's un- 
marred glory and supremacy. Already the gan- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 265 

grene of dissolution was in the muscular tissues 
of the empire. Its people were corrupted, from 
the patricians down to the slaves, and there was 
no saving grace in them. If the invading bar- 
barians from the remotest east had kept their 
strong and greedy hands away from the jeweled 
republic that was helpless and drunken in its sins, 
the slow decline of the mighty empire might have 
gone on for centuries without any critical shock. 
There would have been no universal uprising 
against evil social conditions, for the besotted 
citizens were contented with them. There could 
have been no reformatory revolution, for the 
times were too rotten to bring forth a Rienzi. 
There might have been passing conflicts between 
rival robber-leaders for the mastery, and the de- 
bauched populace would have tamely accepted 
the despotic rule of the victor. This would have 
been all, and Rome would have gone down to 
inevitable death as tranquilly as goes the fore- 
doomed leper. There is no parallelism to this 
all-pervading profligate supineness in the Ameri- 
can republic to-day. True, the Triumphant Plu- 
tocracy is here, doing its evil work in the destruc- 
tion of the nation, but it is now confronted by 
millions of honest and law-abiding producers, 



266 THE COMING CLIMAX 

who are brave enough, strong enough and patri- 
otic enough to say them "Nay," and say it with 
such stern emphasis that there shall be no doubt 
of their meaning. 

From this antagonistic arraying of forces there 
is and must continue to be grave danger to the 
peace of the republic until the differences be- 
tween them are equitably and definitely settled. 
It is a serious matter when millions of intelli- 
gent and courageous workers firmly believe that 
an aristocratic oligarchy is not only robbing 
them of the fruits of their toil, but is also tak- 
ing away their rights and liberties as citizens 
of a free democracy. Squarely stated, the 
banded American toilers firmly believe that the 
Triumphant Plutocracy has established a usurpa- 
tion in Washington's republic by craft, gold and 
force. Whosoever says that this condition of 
affairs does not forebode peril to the republic, 
knows little either of human history or human 
nature. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE DREAD DYNAMICS OF HATE 

"For time at last sets all things even, 

And if we do but watch the hour, 

There never yet was human power 
That could evade, if unforgiven, 

The patient search and vigil long. 

Of him who treasures up a wrong." 

— {Lord Byron. 

Millions of American producers hate the Tri- 
umphant Plutocracy. They hate it in the abstract. 
They hate it in the concrete. They hate the 
ruling motives which make up its life-principle. 
They hate the members of its visible body in 
the shape of corporations, trusts, millionaires, 
venal legislatures, corrupt courts, lying news- 
papers, lackey-attorneys and Pinkerton-thugs. 
They hate every man and agency that willingly 
serves, caters to or even excuses the rule of the 
Triumphant Plutocracy, their deeply abhorred 
foe. What manner of men are doing this stern 
hating of the plutocratic status quo in its entirety, 
together with all its individual beneficiaries, offi- 
cials, aiders, abettors and apologists? We shall 
267 



268 THE COMING CLIMAX 

be specific on that point because it is of supreme 
importance. They belong to all the farmers' 
societies with their aggregate membership of mill- 
ions. They belong to the Federation of Labor 
with its hundreds of thousands, to the Knights 
of Labor with their hundreds of thousands, and 
to the railway associations numbering nearly 
half a million of men. We leave out of this 
count hundreds of thousands of young men who 
are forced to compete with one another for low- 
waged clerical positions, and also the hundreds 
of thousands of small shopkeepers and manufact- 
urers who at last see that the vast aggregations 
of capital which have invaded every avenue of 
commercial enterprise in these late years are 
soon destined to drive them down hill to ruin. 
Hence we shall confine our assertions, as to the 
hatred of the toiler for Capitalism together with 
all its entourage and paraphernalia of rule, to 
the ranks of the organized producers, for there 
it is exceedingly easy to make a strong prima 
facie case. Remember first, that a burning sense 
of wrong breeds hate, and then please con- 
sider for an instant the causes which brought 
about these great defensive organizations in all 
departments of productive toil. Please remem- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 269 

ber that we say all departments. If it were now 
as twenty-five years ago, and only the New 
England shoemakers and factory operatives 
were banded for mutual protection, while the 
moral questions involved might rightfully chal- 
lenge the consideration of the Christian patriot, 
the average selfish citizen could go on looking 
out for number one in perfect security, so far as 
any immediate danger to himself or his country 
were concerned. But to-day the situation is far 
different, for it can be truthfully stated that the 
entire working forces of the country, numbering 
millions of men, are now thoroughly organized. 
Why are they so organized? Because through 
organization they hope to peacefully protect 
themselves against the injustice of an organized 
Capitalism. 

These defensive societies were not started 
until it became evident beyond all doubt or 
question that the workers of the country were 
being systematically wronged. Capitalism had 
gotten them in a condition where, acting alone 
as individuals, they could not help themselves; 
they were abjectly at its mercy. Capital arro- 
gated to itself the autocratic privilege of fixing 
the wage of the worker, and denied him all 



270 THE COMING CLIMAX 

voice or opinion as to the value of his day's toil. 
It said, "Take what I offer you or go elsewhere 
and seek employment; the country is wide and 
it is also a land of liberty, for if my wage does 
not suit you, there is no compulsion in the mat- 
ter and you can reject it at your good pleas- 
ure." Most specious reasoning this, which takes 
no account of the long service of the toiler, of 
his accustomed habit of occupation, of his hav- 
ing adjusted his domestic affairs to a certain en- 
vironment, which for a man of small reserved 
capital to break up, means cruel hardship to 
himself and family in any event, with the prob- 
able contingency of poverty and downright pau- 
perdom. A beautiful equality it is that sub- 
sists between the capitalist and laborer, to be 
sure. The man of money carefully selects the 
time when trade is temporarily dull, and iron- 
hearted employers are closing factories and dis- 
charging operatives in order to dispose of their 
over-production at a high price by stimulating a 
fear of shortage among merchants. Then the 
manufacturers, railway bosses or mine owners 
call their help together and say, "Times are 
hard and we must either scale down your wages 
or close up," and the powerless workingmen ac- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 271 

cept rather than take the chances of starvation. 
Times soon boom again for the capitalist but 
not for the worker, and when the toilers humbly 
suggest that trade is brisk and the old scale of 
wages should in fairness be restored, they are 
met by the cold reply, "The law of supply and 
demand regulates the price of all commodities, 
labor among the rest; the streets of the city are 
swarming with idle men, who would gladly take 
your jobs at half your wages; so be contented 
with what you are now getting or clear out and 
give place to someone else." 

A great corporation, that has been in the habit 
of paying an annual dividend of twenty-five per 
cent on its much-watered capital stock, finds 
that a turn of the current of business will only 
enable it to pay ten per cent. This sudden cut 
down will very much irritate stockholders, who 
ask no questions so long as the accustomed lump 
comes regularly in, but who will naturally ascribe 
the lapse in dividends to bad management on 
the part of the executive officers of the com- 
pany. What is to be done? Why, cut down 
the wages of the help and thus make up the 
deficit. The operatives may grumble, but that 
is nothing to the growling of the stockholders, 



272 THE COMING CLIMAX 

who are all-potential in the premises. Where 
the beneficent law of supply and demand has 
not worked quite to the satisfaction of the cap- 
italists, they have assisted nature by importing 
ignorant and debased Italians, Poles, Huns and 
Slavs, making them the low-waged competitors 
of a higher order of workingmen, whom education 
and custom had habituated to the average com- 
forts of civilized society. The Triumphant Plu- 
tocracy continued to import these wage-depress- 
ing toilers, until it was found that the regular 
surplus of nearly a million workers, together 
with the increasing stream of immigrants, gave 
them all the supply-and-demand leverage that 
was wanted; and then they generously allowed 
Congress to pass a law forbidding further impor- 
tation of pauper laborers. 

Philanthropic sentimentalists who rejoice in 
good incomes under the reign of the Triumphant 
Plutocracy, and sincerely wish all the world 
well, and desire to see everybody well fed, well 
clad and happy, try to make out that capital 
and labor have common interests, and hence 
should live and toil together in sweet unity like 
loving brothers. These worthy persons can 
figure out to their own satisfaction that such 



THE COMING CLIMAX 273 

should be the case, but all their fine-spun theo- 
rizings seem very puerile when placed beside the 
hard facts of the actual situation. 

Under present commercial and industrial con- 
ditions, capital and labor are in a state of irrec- 
oncilable antagonism, and an irrepressible con- 
flict must rage between them until one or the 
other comes out of the battle absolute con- 
queror. The status of the combat at the pres- 
ent time is substantially as follows: The laborer 
is striving to get the highest possible price for 
his day's work, and, as we once heard Samuel 
Gompers, President of the Federation of Labor, 
remark, "The worker wants more, and then he 
wants more, and then he wants still more." 
Capital, meanwhile, through the law of its being, 
which is selfishness, will endeavor to hammer 
the wage of the toiler down to the lowest notch. 

A materialistic thinker once said to us, "If 
you want to get rich, rig some kind of a job and 
put a hundred or so men to work at it, and fix 
their compensation so that every day you make 
thirty cents off the labor of each one. Do this 
and the eternal search of the alchemist need not 
interest you, for you will already have found the 
philosopher's stone." 

18 



274 THE COMING CLIMAX 

The manufacturers, mine owners and railway 
magnates have only one avenue by which they 
pile up wealth, and that lies in the debatable 
land between the cost of production and the 
price received from the consumer. In case of 
the multiplicity of articles sold in dry goods and 
notion stores, the competition between rival 
manufacturers makes the cost of production a 
factor of prime importance in determining prices. 
Hence they crowd down the wages of the work- 
ers to the uttermost, and use all the horrible en- 
ginery by which ruthless abundance takes advan- 
tage of helpless want. They make poor creat- 
ures compete with one another until wages are 
crushed down to the starvation line and women 
are found making shirts at ten cents a dozen. 
Here is the devil's workshop that turned out 
Helen Campbell's 100,000 women prisoners of 
poverty in New York City alone, who fight off 
death on less than fifty cents a day, by working 
sixteen hours out of the twenty-four amid scenes 
of unspeakable squalor, filth and wretchedness. 
Precisely the same condition obtains in every 
great city in the country. Recently in Chicago 
the daily papers threw a revealing lime-light on 
the horrors of the "sweating dens," where men, 



THE COMING CLIMAX 275 

women and children are as truly chained to the 
bench of toil as is the galley slave. Well-off 
people then found how it comes that they can 
get such wonderful bargains in our cheap stores. 
Goods are cheap because human flesh and blood 
are cheap, under our supply-and-demand civili- 
zation. Does anything come of these spasmodic 
revelations of the horrors of life among the 
lowly? Nothing comes from them. There has 
been for years a regular periodicity of appear- 
ance of such slum-chronicles. They have their 
place in the regular newspaper routine, like the 
fairs and charity balls, but no one in the higher 
walks of life gives them more than passing atten- 
tion. Nothing is ever done toward reforming 
the diabolical conditions that produce those evil 
effects. Our pious and comfortably circum- 
stanced people heave a few sighs over the mon- 
umental miseries which they see no possible 
way of helping except by going to work at the 
task, and that they will not do, so they give 
their consciences the anodyne of "The poor ye 
have always with you," and then fall to con- 
gratulating themselves on being so much better 
off than some other of God's children. 

The existence of these crimes against hu- 



276 THE COMING CLIMAX 

manity stands as an indictment of our enlight- 
ened ruling class at the bar of God. Their 
educated souls know these enormities for what 
they are, but their selfish material bodies will 
sacrifice nothing to put them away. These 
alleged Christian people are squarely disobedient 
to the divine command; they know the higher 
law of loving service to the suffering, but deny 
it and do it not. They repudiate every essential 
precept and practical observance taught and 
lived by Jesus Christ while on earth, and yet 
confidently expect to go on peacefully in bliss- 
ful enjoyment of all the good things that money 
can buy here below, and then at death, by 
grace of an empty, mouthing belief, pass at once 
into the eternal joys of paradise. 

It is our firm conviction that the measure of 
the nation's iniquities is nearly full. Yet a little 
while longer and God's watchful eye will note 
that it runs over. Then beware of His avenging 
hand, for it shall be with us as it has been with 
many a vanished people in the past: we shall 
be withered up by the fire of His just wrath. If 
there is not very soon a general awakening on 
the part of our whole people and a rising up to 



THE COMING CLIMAX 277 

do good deeds meet for repentance, we firmly 
believe that within the next five years a rain of 
fire and blood will descend upon this nation that 
thousands of years hence will have record as 
one of the great epochal tragedies of human his- 
tory. How any philosophical thinker, who 
believes in God's moral law and recognizes that 
there is an uplifting evolutionary force pervad- 
ing the life of the race, which will not be balked 
or denied but crushes out everything that gets 
in its way, can arrive at any other conclusion, 
is a mystery to us. 

Affairs are nearing a direful culmination in 
this country, and that too with such terrible 
rapidity that no man dare speak securely of the 
morrow. 

The condition of the hundreds of thousands 
of men, women and children, who do piece- 
work for the "sweaters," is an awful object-lesson 
of the horrible state in which the mine, factory, 
railway and trades workers would have found 
themselves but for their powerful defensive or- 
ganizations. These alone have stood between 
them and a capitalistic rapacity, which would 
have surely reduced them by this time to nearly 
the degraded condition of the peons of Mexico 



278 THE COMING CLIMAX 

and ryots of Hindostan. Please remember that 
the oppressed piece-workers of the cities were 
not organized, whereas the other toilers indi- 
cated were, and this is the sole reason for their 
different situations to-day. And yet some very 
good people, whose happy lot it is to do no work 
and still have plenty of money to spend, look 
down upon this army of bronzed and brawny 
toilers as a turbulent and unreasonable set of 
fellows, who have no respect for law and order, 
and had just as soon turn our civilization bottom- 
side-up as not. Yet there is one class of pecul- 
iar toilers, whom they do most deeply sympa- 
thize with, and that is the scab, the dear, sweet 
scab, who is anxious to do honest work, but these 
riotous and brutal organized laboring men won't 
let him. But it is noticeable that the Triumph- 
ant Plutocracy only have this tender interest in 
the scab when they want to use him as a club to 
batter organized labor into the dust; when this 
is done Mr. Scab can go to Hades for all they 
care for him. 

The scab threatens the prosperity of all 
toilers; he is an open enemy of the laborer's 
wife and children ; he would keep them scantily 
clad, he would deny them sufficient food, he 



THE COMING CLIMAX 279 

Would rob them of the cheering hope of a brighter 
future. Is it singular that the organized toiler, 
who would build a better and sweeter life for 
him and his, should hate the unfortunate scab, 
who blocks his way to that legitimate end? 

An early English explorer found on the coast 
of Africa a new kind of animal, which he said 
was extremely savage and ferocious, because 
when attacked it would defend itself. The Tri- 
umphant Plutocracy has made a similar discov- 
ery in the case of organized labor, and is greatly 
horrified thereat. 

In a far distant time that is now in the mysti- 
cal realm that holds the days that are to be, 
"ages after you and I, like streaks of morning 
cloud, shall have melted into the infinite azure 
of the past," some profound philosopher may 
pass a much different judgment on the organ- 
ized American toilers who rose in the last quar- 
ter of the nineteenth century, than now passes 
current among the Triumphant Plutocracy's 
beneficiaries. He will see, in the stern ranks of 
those embattled workingmen, a providential 
bulwark behind which the builders of a new and 
grander civilization did their task, defiant of the 
force of an unchained greed, which sought to 



280 THE COMING CLIMAX 

destroy all the Christlike elements which must 
enter into an order of society that is worthy the 
glory light of God's approving smile. 

All this time the workingmen hold deep and 
deadly hate against the Triumphant Plutoc- 
racy. We are ready to concede that nursing 
wrath to keep it warm is entirely against the 
theory of Christianity; still it happens to be 
in perfect accord with the practice of the average 
Christian, for when wronged he is tolerably apt 
to hate the wronger. But in this instance the 
main question in which the people of our 
country are interested, is not one of morals but 
one of facts. Do millions of workingmen 
hate the Triumphant Plutocracy as a league 
of oppressors? Do they regard its rule as a 
usurpation in Washington's republic, that at 
once profanes and perverts the wholesome 
functions of democratic government? It is our 
contention that this affirmation is both broadly 
and specifically true. As a general rule work- 
ingmen hate the corporation for which they toil ; 
they hate its bosses, managers and stockholders, 
individually and collectively, and are all the 
time on guard because they expect any moment 



THE COMING CLIMAX 281 

may bring forth some subtle scheme for cutting 
down their pay. They hate these plutocratic 
officials doubly because they seek to trample on 
their rights as men and citizens. All the work- 
ingmen's orders have grown up in defiance of 
persecution. It has been the steady plan and 
purpose of all corporations to crush out labor- 
societies whenever they were strong enough to 
do so. Again and again have plutocratic bosses 
black-listed and discharged men for belonging to 
labor-organizations. Leaders have been system- 
atically hounded until large numbers of them 
were forced to seek other vocations. Only when 
compelled to it by self-interest, will corpora- 
tions treat the men under them as American 
citizens. Again and again have humble dele- 
gations of workers, who came hat in hand to 
plead their case before the high and mighty plu- 
tocratic master, been waved away without even 
a hearing. It has been the customary policy of 
arrogant corporations to treat workingmen as if 
they had no rights which the corporations were 
bound to respect. They have been given to 
understand that a chance to toil long hours for 
small pay was to be regarded as a boon, for 
which they should be profoundly thankful. Of 



282 THE COMING CLIMAX 

late years, since the organized workers have 
made such formidable demonstrations of them- 
selves on Labor day, it has become the fashion 
of certain plutocratic journals to make a great 
verbal show of kindness and fairness towards the 
workers. They talk down at them in an exceed- 
ingly smug and patronizing manner, but it is 
observed that they always deal in platitudinous 
generalities and never become specific. They 
are so good as to acknowledge that society 
really owes some consideration to the men who 
are doing all the hard work. They say that 
labor has rights as well as capital, which is very 
generous of them, but it is observed that these 
newspapers always change the subject, when it 
comes to giving a detailed explanation of the 
nature of the workers' rights. These same plu- 
tocratic newspapers are very clear, however, 
when called upon to designate the law-but- 
tressed, tradition-honored, indefeasible, inalien- 
able and God-given rights of capital. Capital 
is absolute monarch in its own domain. It may 
hire and discharge at pleasure. It may indicate 
the prerequisites of obtaining employment and 
may at any time make new rules thereon. It 
may also at its good pleasure fix up any sort of 



THE COMING CLIMAX 283 

a test as a condition of retaining employment. 
It can arbitrarily declare that all workers who 
will not on the instant abjure their labor socie- 
ties, shall be at once discharged. Capital can 
arbitrate difficulties with its workers or not as it 
may elect. It can at any time despotically 
lower wages. It can force employes to trade at 
its truck stores. It can compel them to take its 
scrip in defiance of law, as is still being done in 
sections of Kansas. It can deny them the 
benefit of a weekly pay-day duly decreed by 
statute, as is now being done in Illinois. Two 
thousand railway employes are killed every 
year while in the discharge of their duty, and 
twenty thousand are wounded under the same 
conditions, and nearly all of these casualties 
occur because the railway magnates are so de- 
moniacally greedy that they will not spend money 
for life and limb saving appliances that are 
already in existence and are being unceasingly 
brought to their notice; but at the same time 
they pour out cash without stint to bribe legis- 
lators to smother bills that are brought in for the 
purpose of making them pay a decent compensa- 
tion to men who are crippled in their service. 
At the last general election the brutal power of 



284 THE COMING CLIMAX 

capital was relentlessly used to force working- 
men to vote against their own convictions and 
self-evident interests. Thus, in view of the vast 
and clearly outlined territory held sacred to the 
rights of capital, we would much like an accu- 
rate description of the section devoted to the 
rights of labor, for most surely no plutocratic 
newspaper has ever done more than to refer 
to it in the vaguest and most indirect man- 
ner. The realm in which labor can sit down in 
the carefully-guarded enjoyment of its own vine 
and fig tree certainly does not include a protect- 
ive Pinkerton force, for these are savagely used 
for the persecution of labor. It does not in- 
clude courts of law, together with judges and 
prosecuting officers, for these are swift to use 
every legal quibble, forced construction of law 
and doubtful technicality, against the toiler and 
in favor of the capitalist. 

It has come to pass of late that when a body 
of oppressed toilers make a definite attempt to 
better their condition by taking counsel together 
how they can best defeat some specific scheme 
of rascality on the part of a corporation, then 
forthwith the lackey-lawyers spread the loose- 
meshed common-law conspiracy drag-net and 



THE COMING CLIMAX 285 

gather them in. Only recently, in the city of Chi- 
cago, a trades assembly raised $i 1,000 to defend 
some accused brothers who had been mercilessly 
scooped in by this plutocratic device. But it is 
noticed that this same conspiracy drag-net has 
such a large mesh when it comes to catching 
plutocrats, that Gould, Rockefeller and all the 
trust operators, who are conspiring against the 
wealth-creators of the entire country, slip 
through without turning a scale. 

From the foregoing partial summing-up of the 
rights of capital as recognized and obstinately 
defended by the plutocratic press, we are justi- 
fied in declaring that the absolute and inalien- 
able right of labor, as conceded by the Triumph- 
ant Plutocracy, is the right to starve to death in 
case the worker refuses to toil on such terms as 
capital may autocratically dictate, which is sub- 
stantially the same right which was enjoyed by 
the negro slaves in the South before the war, 
with the single exception that the rebellious 
slave could be lashed to his task. 

In its issue of Sept. 5th., 1891, just two days 
before the great labor parade, the Chicago "News" 
published a large number of answers to a series 
of ten questions which it had sent out to rep- 



286 THE COMING CLIMAX 

resentative capitalists and employers of labor. 

The first question was: "In your judgment is 
there any irreconcilable conflict between capital- 
ists and wage-workers, individually or collect- 
ively ?" 

To this every rich man responded "No." 

Now, please remark the radical contradiction 
to this reply that appears in answer to subse- 
quent questions. 

Question 2d. Do you favor absolute free- 
dom in the use of capital, or do you believe in 
the authority of the state and nation to decree 
an "eight-hour work-day," "weekly pay-day," 
"regulation of the employment of females and 
children" and "legalization of trades unions and 
business combines?" 

Question 7. Do you consider compulsory 
legal arbitration of trade disputes practicable? 

To these queries C. L. Hutchinson, bank 
president and son of "Old Hutch," the distin- 
guished speculator, responded as follows: 

"On general principles the less the state has 
to do with economic questions the better. I 
believe these matters should be a subject of con- 
tract between employer and employee and not 
be tampered with by legislation," and he fur- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 287 

thermore said that trades unions might be of 
advantage, but not as generally conducted. 

J. V. Farwell, Jr., one of Chicago's great dry- 
goods men, answered the first question as follows, 
but was silent as to legal arbitration: "I believe 
that the number of working hours could be reg- 
ulated between employer and employee, without 
the interference of law." 

Mr. Chalmers, the head of a great concern, 
replies: "Absolute freedom, so far as the use 
of capital, hours of work and rate per hour is 
involved. Also as regards pay-day. Notwith- 
standing we employ over 1,000 hands we pay 
every Saturday. 

"No. I believe arbitration possible only under 
certain conditions and then by mutual agree- 
ment between the parties." Which last answer 
is equivalent to denying legal arbitration. 

J. M. W. Jones, president J. M. W. Jones 
Stationery and Printing Company, answering 
second question: "Yes, I believe in absolute 
freedom in the use of capital, most emphatically. 
As to the other questions they seem to me too 
absurd to reply to." 

Henry Schultz answers first as to legal arbi- 
tration and then as to labor organizations : 



288 THE COMING CLIMAX 

"No. If I cannot settle the difficulties between 
myself and employees I will not call on outsiders, 
who cannot understand all the conditions, to 
arbitrate the matter. No. Believe they do 
more harm than good." 

B. M. Hair, of Hair &Ridgeway: 2. "I do favor 
absolute freedom in the use of capital. If the 
authority of the nation or state could be wielded 
fairly and without political influence or bias I 
might feel differently." 

Jas. H. Walker: 2. "Absolute freedom, for 
the reason that it leaves not only the employer 
but the workman free to determine the number 
of hours that shall constitute a day's labor. 
There should be no more interference in the 
matter of trades unions and combines than there 
is of private enterprises." 7. "In very few 
instances, for the reason that such legal com- 
pulsion is contrary to the tenor and spirit of gen- 
eral laws and our Constitution, and no matter 
how much legislation may interfere, the great 
principles of expediency and equity are bound to 
step in and decide the point on nearly a fair 
basis." 

The rich men whose opinions are given here- 
with are thoroughly representative of their class 



THE COMING CLIMAX 289 

all over the country. They first deny that there 
is an irreconcilable antagonism between capital 
and labor, and then at once turn to and prove 
the fact of an irrepressible conflict between 
them out of their own mouths. The most dis- 
heartening feature of this circumstance is its 
demonstration of the unyielding Bourbonism of 
capital. It neither learns nor forgets anything. 
Its attitude to-day toward millions of organized 
toilers is precisely the same that it was when 
Ben Butler vowed he would burn down Lowell 
if the factory owners carried out their threats of 
discharging every man who dared to vote for can- 
didates to the legislature who were pledged to 
push a statute decreeing the ten-hour day. Cap- 
ital has not surrendered an atom of its old-time 
imperious claim. It not only defies the work- 
ingmen to interfere with its traditional absolut- 
ism, but denies the right of the government to 
protect those whom its cruel greed oppresses. 
Labor has during twenty-five years unceasingly 
pressed its just plea for a more righteous recog- 
nition on humane, Christian and politico-eco- 
nomic grounds. It has done this kindly and argu- 
mentatively, in millions of temperate speeches 

and whole libraries of pamphlets and books 
j 9 



290 THE COMING CLIMAX 

that appeal solely to the reason, patriotism and 
sense of justice of the ruling body of our citizens, 
but capitalism has not been so morally educated 
thereby, that it will abate one tittle of its 
ancient tyrant charters. Nay, it has not even 
learned that it might be policy to make reason- 
able concessions to labor, in a land where the 
democratic lion is master so soon as he wills to 
be. 

These facts prove that capital and labor have 
joined issue in a combat to the death in the 
American republic. The millions of organized 
workingmen on one side, and all the forces of 
capitalism on the other, stand to-day facing 
each other as bitterest foes. There is hate, and 
dangerous hate, on both sides, and an irrepressi- 
ble conflict is now going on between them. It 
is utterly out of the question for their differences 
to be compromised by the parties themselves. 
Neither side will yield an inch. We know this of 
a verity, because these late years with their 
thousands of strikes give proof on proof of the 
absolute impossibility of their peacefully coming 
together and reconciling their animosity by an 
equitable adjustment of conflicting interests. 



THE COMING CLIMAX 291 

The country can only be saved from a disaster 
that is universal by promptly taking the ques- 
tion into national legislation and settling it, 
once and for all, on lines of justice that take 
carefully into account that this country is a 
bastard republic, unless it sedulously cultivates 
a governmental polity which aims to do the 
greatest possible good to the greatest possible 
number of its citizens. 

We have here been specifically speaking of 
the ever-growing hate of the army of organized 
toilers in mines, factories, in the general trades 
and on railways, and we now have to add unto 
it the hate of the organized farmers, who are 
millions in number. These hate the Triumph- 
ant Plutocracy in all its parts, just as their great- 
grandfathers hated British rule before the Revo- 
lution. They regard it as an oligarchic usurpa- 
tion, that has come into power in this republic 
through fraud and force. 

The writer speaks confidently and without 
reservation concerning this perilous hatred, be- 
cause he is sure of his facts, and believes the 
safety of the country imperatively demands that 
the truth should promptly be made known to 
the all-potential middle class of this nation, if 
it is to be saved from ruin. 



292 THE COMING CLIMAX 

During the last four years he has received 
thousands of letters from every class of toilers 
and from all sections of the country, all breath- 
ing the same spirit of mingled fear and hate. 

We give herewith a few sentences from 
one just received from the secretary of a 
great labor organization of an eastern city. 
It refers to an editorial by the writer, in 
which was expressed a dread of the future 
by reason of the hatred between the plutocrats 
and the workers. He says: "You illy describe 
the hatred of what you call the 'rival forces' for 
each other. Words cannot describe the ma- 
levolent, malicious and cruel spirit that lies 
down deep in the souls of each other, only wait- 
ing for something to turn up to give them an 
opportunity to throw themselves into a deadly 
conflict for the mastery. I am not an anarchist, 
but I am one of the lower class. My business 
brings me in contact with those who hate and 
abhor us, and I find that a ferocious spirit is 
taking hold of the people, that I fear nothing 
but a revolution will appease, even though they 
know that nothing but ruin can follow such a 
course. In closing would say I am an American 
whose forefathers fought against King George." 



THE COMING CLIMAX 293 

We declare with all solemnity that we do 
know that the foregoing sentiments are those of 
millions of workingmen. It is darkly reflected 
in the editorials of the hundreds of papers which 
champion their cause, but this literature of a 
new reformation our blindly contented middle 
class never see. Before putting our unqualified 
assertion of this deep hatred on the part of the 
workingmen into print, we "made assurance 
doubly sure and took a bond of fate," by care- 
ful inquiry among intelligent and influential 
labor-leaders who are thoroughly informed on 
the subject, and they one and all declared that 
no language could fitly set forth the intense and 
steadily growing hatred of the workers for the 
present oppressive capitalistic order. There- 
fore our statement of this hatred stands with- 
out any qualification or toning down, and we 
know that it will defy all attempts to disprove 
it. It holds good for ninety-five per cent of the 
organized workers and farmers. If this be true 
is there nothing portentous in it ? We declare 
that never in its history was our country over- 
hung by such awful peril, which may be precipi- 
tated on it at any time by the merest accidental 
conjunction of evil circumstances. Thirty years 



294 THE COMING CLIMAX 

ago the relations between capital and labor 
were friendly, and there was no irreconcilable 
antagonism between them; but, come to think, 
there was an irreconcilable antagonism abroad 
in the land at that time, and it was between the 
North and South. We all know the result 
thereof, but the sectional antagonism of three 
decades ago was but as the passing wrath of 
children, when compared with that now raging 
and seething in the breasts of millions of men, 
of rival interests and alien social position. 

Lives there a philosopher worth the name 
who dares deny the dread logic of these facts, 
and who will venture to dispute that an awful 
tendency of events is bearing us swiftly toward 
an appalling catastrophe? All the elements for 
an overwhelming explosion are now in a highly 
inflammable state, and need only a spark to 
ignite them. 

All men of good judgment, who have given 
the present crisis the study it deserves, are of 
one opinion on the subject, and all of them 
view the future with the utmost concern. Only 
now and then is there a sanguine one among 
them who believes that the coming climax will 
be a peaceful one, while the most sadly declare 



THE COMING CLIMAX 295 

that they fear that a storm of fire and blood is 
inevitable, because the middle class will con- 
tinue to side with the Triumphant Plutocracy 
and not awaken to the dread peril of the situa- 
tion until it is eternally too late. How a people 
that remembers the Pittsburgh strike and the 
national shock which followed it can now lie 
supine while we are drifting steadily toward a rep- 
etition of that disaster on a thousandfold greater 
scale, is indeed mysterious and past finding out. 

The civil war came from the momentum that 
began with the Kansas border troubles of 1855 
-56, which culminated in national war six years 
later. The railroad strike of 1877 was the first 
skirmish in the mighty conflict that is to readjust 
the relations between capital and productive 
toil in the American republic. The movement 
of the producers has been gathering in power 
and volume during the last fourteen years, and 
when the final shock comes it will be as much 
greater than that of the civil war as it was 
longer in preparation. 

Oh, middle-class men of America! rise up and 
see that justice be done, if you would save 
Christian civilization from the most terrible ca- 
lamity that ever threatened it ! 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE IMPENDING CRASH 

"The federal government is becoming Russianized, and the states and 
their people are becoming Mexicanized. We must go back to our 
old-fashioned government of justice, law and order, or see the map 
of this continent dotted here and there with the blood-red splotches 
of anarchy and revolution." — {Front a recent editorial in the Atlanta 
"Constitution." 

At the present stage of this work we squarely 
affirm that a national catastrophe is near by, and 
will inevitably come to pass, unless wise pre- 
ventive measures are promptly taken. It can 
be truly declared that the peace of our country 
exists from day to day at the mercy of chance, 
for all the elements required for a stupendous 
explosion are now underneath the fabric of organ- 
ized society, and the hand of untoward circum- 
stance may at any time unchain their latent de- 
structiveness. The sinister meeting of this readi- 
ness for combustion with the accidental spark 
may not take place this week, this year or in the 
next five years, but there is not one chance in a 
thousand that matters can drift on for ten years 

as they now are going without a terrible climax. 
296 



THE COMING CLIMAX 29? 

Even to-morrow, through one of those minor 
events which always seems so inadequate to usher 
in a monumental calamity, the threatening cata- 
clysm may descend upon us. "The ponderous 
gates of circumstance turn on the slightest 
hinge." No man can carefully scan his own past 
without noting how remarkably his life was 
changed by the merest trifles. A sharp south- 
erly wind might have driven the Mayflower into 
the mouth of the Delaware and thus made the 
history of America far other than it is. When 
the final crash comes it will probably be brought 
on by one of those minute incidents, like unto 
the leak in the Johnstown dam. 

Let us briefly summarize the situation as it 
now stands. We have in preceding chapters 
fully set forth the irreconcilable antagonism 
between the dominant Capitalism and the pro- 
ducers ol the country, and every day the hostility 
between them is becoming more intense and 
definite. There is not a hint of surrender on 
either side so far as the main issue between 
them is concerned, and both their armies are 
now busily at work consolidating and organizing 
for a decisive trial by battle. There would not 
be the slightest danger to the peace of the repub- 



298 THE COMING CLIMAX 

lie from this source if the country were now 
being run on democratic lines. The plutocrats 
affirm the general righteousness of the present 
industrial and financial status, while millions of 
producers give a positive negative thereto. Now, 
under a government that was truly popular, the 
issue would, by common consent, be at once 
taken into the politics of the country. It is a 
public question, and there is the proper place for 
its determination. This action would be in 
harmony with the democratic idea that follows 
the way of progress, justice and peace. But 
the Triumphant Plutocrats refuse to give the 
case a hearing in the political court of the 
nation, because they know the unjust nature of 
their franchises and will not submit them to im- 
partial arbitrament, if they can possibly help 
it. Hence they are now using all the enormous 
forces at their command, to keep the case out 
of court, and the producing masses find them- 
selves in the position of an impoverished suitor, 
who ascertains that his rich oppressor has 
bought up the judge and court officials, and 
retained every available lawyer. 

In this comparison we by no means overstate 
the situation, for the plutocrats are doing every- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 299 

thing in their power to defeat the rudimentary 
attempts of the producers toward getting a hear- 
ing of their case before the high court of the 
people en masse. In the first place, the general 
government, which may in this instance stand 
for the judge, refuses to give an official cogni- 
zance to the producers' case, and waves it away 
as not having the prima facie merit to demand 
consideration. The daily newspapers, clergymen 
and orators, who represent the court officials 
scout at the absurdity of these producers having 
any substantial grievances that require redress. 
The political machines of the democratic and 
republican parties, absolutely owned by the plu- 
tocrats, stand for the attorneys who have already 
received big retainers from the rich defendant. 
So at the present time the producers are barred 
out of court, and cannot get in until they create 
the mechanism of a new party to take charge of 
their case. The Triumphant Plutocrats are so 
anxious to keep the plea of the producers from 
going before the country as a political issue, that 
they use all means to abort its taking organized 
shape. They have their paid Pinkerton spies in 
every labor-society in the country, and these men 
earn their money not alone as informers, but 



300 THE COMING CLIMAX 

also in order to secure a richer wage they must 
be expert obstructers, marplots and destroyers. 
Furthermore, it is the settled policy of the plu- 
tocrats in their unholy war against the producers, 
to buy and corrupt, so far as possible, the men 
who are in the position of leaders. If one of 
these captains or generals of the people's army 
has a weak spot in his armor, these cunning 
beguilers soon find it, and then he is approached 
accordingly. In this age, when the accursed 
thirst for gold is so well nigh universal, a man's 
most vulnerable side is usually the one on which 
his pocket-book is located, so there they strike. 
When these Benedict Arnolds have once con- 
summated their infamy, they become crafty and 
tireless architects of villainy, and take a satanic 
delight in working all the evil they can. When 
one of these scoundrels who has talents for 
leadership sells out to the plutocrats, he receives 
an abundance of money aid. In order to give 
his services the utmost value to his masters, he 
builds himself up as high as possible into positions 
of authority, where he can exercise a malign 
influence in the wrong direction of the affairs of 
his confiding constituency. These treasons are 
exceedingly difficult to find out, because both 



THE COMING CLIMAX 301 

parties to the scandalous contract have a direct 
interest in keeping the transaction a dead secret. 
Open detection of the traitors is well-nigh im- 
possible for this reason, and not even a well- 
grounded suspicion rests on them, until a long 
course of flagrant misconduct lays them open 
to the charge of being either blundering incom- 
petents or deliberate knaves. This far-reaching 
and carefully-planned scheme of the plutocrats 
to keep the case of the producers out of court 
is a dangerous weighting down of the safety valve, 
as our people may perchance find out one of 
these days. 

Another and most ill-omened sign of the times 
is a general expectancy of evil days to come. All 
thoughtful and intuitive persons of the middle 
and wealthy classes frankly acknowledge their 
fear of the future, while the same sentiment is 
universal among intelligent farmers and working- 
men who are reading and thinking on the living 
questions of the time. Worst of all is their 
dreary hopelessness of being able to do anything 
that shall turn the impending crisis into channels 
that are entirely peaceful. Strive to their utter- 
most all true men will, for that is their plain duty, 
but through all their toiling despair abides with 



302 THE COMING CLIMAX 

them and they feel themselves powerless in the 
hands of an inexorable fate. In support of this 
averment the writer had gathered together from 
newspapers and private letters an over-sufficiency 
of corroborative testimony, but when he came 
to classify it for use in this volume the very 
mass of it baffled him, because it would make 
a book of itself. So he uses only the extract at 
the head of this chapter, and confidently bids him 
who doubts the truth of this statement to go 
forth and make search for himself, with the posi- 
tive assurance that it will be a light task to get 
a large harvest of grim facts that will irrefraga- 
bly establish the truth of our assertion. It is a 
dangerous symptom for the peace of the republic 
that millions of citizens believe the present gov- 
ernment to be an oligarchic usurpation, and by no 
means a true incarnation of the democratic idea 
as intended by the fathers. The plutocrats hurl 
counter charges of disaffected and revolutionary 
purposes, but the great plain people decline to 
be routed by these accusations. 

It matters not that the plutocracy points to 
the millions of votes which placed its officials in 
power. Napoleon III did the same many a time 



THE COMING CLIMAX 303 

and oft, but France's repudiation of the imperial 
usurper after Sedan showed a sentiment toward 
him which somehow the people's suffrages failed 
to register. The modern machine-politics of 
America have of recent years so juggled with our 
voting system that the common people could 
not declare their will through it for their better- 
ment. This of a verity they do know and be- 
lieve, and the most speciously preserved sem- 
blances and cunningly devised make-believes of 
popular government cannot cheat the actual facts 
of their stern logic, because the people feel their 
disfranchisement in the increasingly hard lines 
of their daily lives. And yet withal the produc- 
ing masses of this country are now the custodi- 
ans of the only loyalty to Washington's repub- 
lic, whose fervent devotion is absolutely above 
and beyond all valid suspicion. Why should 
they not be true to the democratic idea that un- 
derlies our theory of government, when it prom- 
ises them all that any honest and liberty-loving 
man can ask ? The great plain people are willing 
to work for a living, and are satisfied to the lim- 
it with a government that gives everybody equal 
rights under the law, and prevents the vicious 
from stealing the fruits of their toil, either 



304 THE COMING CLIMAX 

by open theft or crafty devices. Right here the 
producer chimes in with his complaint against 
the present perversion of the old righteous order 
of the republic. He declares that it lets a favored 
class rob him, and when he ventures to make 
outcry thereat, the plutocratic robbers call him 
socialist, anarchist and all sorts of horrible 
epithets of fearful sound and obscure meaning. 
The working producers of America are faithful 
to the democratic idea. They love Washington's 
republic and do not wish to see a government of 
the people, by the people and for the people 
perish from the earth. The camel may somehow 
wriggle through the needle's eye, the rich man 
may finally read his title clear to a mansion in 
the sky, but never, never, will the average trust 
or corporation millionaire be a loyal citizen of 
the American republic. He is the natural enemy 
of our free institutions, and all the acts of his 
life will tend to tear them down. Yet these de- 
structionists are now in full command of the 
United States government, and have driven the 
true believers out of the temple of liberty and 
branded them as heterodox. 

The loyal producing millions do not take kindly 
to their disinherited estate, and denounce the 



THE COMING CLIMAX 305 

Triumphant Plutocrats as lawless usurpers. This 
deeply drawn issue is dangerous to the peace of 
the republic. 

In 1863 good men and true were mining for 
gold in the gulches and canyons of far-off Mon- 
tana; other good men and true were merchandiz- 
ing, blacksmithing, boot-making, house-building 
and doing other worthy tasks that served to 
create a home for organized society among those 
bleak mountain ranges. Bad men who were true 
children of Belial came also into that remote 
nook of America. They were thieves, gamblers, 
murderers, disbarred lawyers and criminals of 
every degree, who fled from the restraints of 
eastern civilization and sought new Montana as a 
fresh field for depredation. The good men and true 
kept busily at it making money against the happy 
day when they could return to the loved ones in 
God's country far away toward the rising sun, 
and so the righteous ruling of the community 
went by default. Then spake the outlaws one 
to another: "Here is richness! The government 
of the country goes begging, let us shrewd ones 
take it up and make crime legal." So forthwith 
was it done, and the captain of the road agents 



306 THE COMING CLIMAX 

became high sheriff, and diversified his official 
duties with the pleasing recreation of robbing 
stages and murdering passengers, and the judge- 
ships and the court clerkships and the town 
offices and the county offices and all the official 
mechanism of organized society, were parceled 
out among the rogues, cut-throats and profes- 
sional enemies of decent humanity, and it seemed 
as if the devil might with much comfort to him- 
self soon shift his permanent abode to the upper 
earth. And when the good men and true mur- 
mured at the unutterable horror of it all, they 
were looked upon threateningly by the official 
rulers, and received warning of the dread punish- 
ment that would be visited upon all rebels against 
duly constituted authority. The term anarchist 
was not fashionable then, or they would have 
been lashed with it by the thugs who were run- 
ning the government. Then God's evolutionary 
force which maketh ever toward righteousness 
prepared for action in the brave souls and strong 
muscle of the good men and true. Stanch citizens 
who were loyal to justice, to virtue and to eternal 
truth, took counsel with one another in secret 
places; the honest came to know each other by 
look and touch, and at last in the fullness of 



THE COMING CLIMAX 307 

time, when hell yawned to receive back its own, 
up rose the Vigilantes, mighty in their righteous 
wrath at the evil deeds of evil men. The sheriff 
and his riff-raff crew of legalized murderers were 
torn from their drunken dream of safe ravage, 
to be strung up by their vile necks, until the 
vile life was squeezed out of their vile carcasses, 
and then good men breathed free and heaven 
smiled. But horrors on horrors! Here was 
anarchy rampant! There was no government, 
because about all the regularly elected officials 
had been hung by a mob. But it was observed 
that men who believed in God's law were there; 
men who believed in right between man and 
man were there ; men who believed in the Dec- 
laration of Independence, the Constitution of the 
United States, law and order and Christian civ- 
ilization were there, and hence the foul wreckage 
of a demon-order of society was soon swept away, 
and the good men and true promptly and with- 
out shock built a righteous system of govern- 
ment that hath endured from that day to this. 

We have had many examples in this country 
of vigilance committees that were wholesome 
and necessary. There have been cases where 
the mechanism of local government became so 



308 THE COMING CLIMAX 

befouled, that it neither would nor could cleanse 
itself. Then the good people were compelled to 
get back to first principles and do the task them- 
selves. This Montana incident brings us face to 
face with a feature of our American character, 
concerning which no philosophical statesman has 
ever dared to tell the whole truth. Bluntly 
stated, it is our lack of respect for the law of the 
land, together with an easy readiness in breaking 
the same whenever it chances to stand in the way 
of something we particularly wish to do. The 
use of the pronoun "we" in this instance is made 
very advisedly, for the average individual Ameri- 
can citizen is probably as meek and obedient 
in the presence of the law as the average citizen 
of any other nation under the sun, but multiply 
the very docile gentleman by one hundred, one 
thousand, a hundred thousand or ten million, 
and the resultant product is a vastly different 
being. Let this Titanic creature have as a soul 
one strong desire, and then woe betide the law 
that bars the road to its realization, for he will 
trample it under foot without either respect or 
fear. And yet we Americans pride ourselves on 
being a singularly law-abiding people, and con- 
spicuous in that respect above all others on 



THE COMING CLIMAX 309 

the face of the earth. This is true in the 
main, for our laws as a rule lie parallel with 
what we regard as our best interests. They 
are adjusted to our inclinations and ordinary 
habits, hence there is an unconscious gravi- 
tation toward obedience, that we esteem as 
a high virtue, and when a single individual 
strives to pull away from the majority and dis- 
obey on his own personal account, we punish him 
sharply. We are usually, however, very toler- 
ant where masses of men as one body break the 
law of the land by a single tragic act, such as 
a mob taking a murderer away from the sheriff 
and hanging him. It is felt that not only has 
rude justice been done, but what is far more 
important, the peace and general interests of 
society have not been harmed thereby; so every 
one slights the actual infraction of the law in- 
volved, and makes haste to forget it. 

The rebellion of the Southern States offers a 
special exception to this general rule of charity 
toward en masse breaches of the law. This out- 
break received different treatment, because the 
act upset the political and commercial status of 
the nation; it was a blow at the interests of the 
majority and threatened to dwarf the republic 



310 THE COMING CLIMAX 

of its fair proportions. The rebellious citizens 
were fought until they surrendered to the old 
order of things. Then the charitable rule of deal- 
ing with en masse violations of the law became 
operative again, and no one suffered for the 
offense. Let us now see what manner of pun- 
ishment was meted out for an open, notorious, 
long-continued and wide-spread defiance of the 
Constitution of the republic, on the part of mill- 
ions of citizens. The fifteenth amendment gave 
the negro the right of suffrage under the same 
warrant of governmental protection as is enjoyed 
by the white man. It became a part of the 
fundamental law of the land that the black 
man could go to the polls and deposit his ballot 
in peace, with no one to molest him or make him 
afraid. If the United States government stood 
knowingly by while that law was being forcibly 
set at naught, and passively endured its viola- 
tion on a large scale, through a term of years, it 
thereby stultified itself and became a sham repub- 
lic And this was precisely the action of the 
United States in the premises. It knew perfectly 
well that through the means of night riders, 
bulldozers, the shot-gun policy and tissue bal- 
lots, the fifteenth amendment was nullified all 



THE COMING CLIMAX 311 

through the South, and the negro-vote in that 
section made practically non-existent. Further- 
more, a President, who was the nominee of the 
party that had forced the fifteenth amendment 
into the Constitution, dickered his way into a 
doubtful seat by covenanting that the said amend- 
ment should lie dead in the Constitution so far 
as the South was concerned. This was done 
by the tacit consent of the entire nation, which 
was ready to sacrifice an established govern- 
mental principle and the sanctity of the funda- 
mental law of the republic, for peace and the 
general business interests of the people at large. 
We are not here discussing the moral aspect of 
this question in the slightest degree, for it does 
not lie within the purview of this treatise. It 
may be that the sober second thought of the 
victorious republican North was right in telling 
them that the conditions imposed upon the de- 
feated South were too hard, and reacted injuri- 
ously upon the whole nation. /it may have been 
both unstatesmanlike and impolitic to have bur- 
dened the nation suddenly with millions of igno- 
rant voters, whom it were wiser to have held for 
a time in a condition of probationary pupilage 
prior to the enjoyment of full citizenship. Per- 



312 THE COMING CLIMAX 

haps the North realized when too late that it had 
been over-hot in confirming its triumph by 
means of the fifteenth amendment, and hence 
was compelled to back out of the consequences 
of its blunder, even though the sacredness of 
the Constitution suffered thereby. With all this 
our argument has nothing whatsoever to do, and 
we only refer to the episode that we may through 
it clinch the closer our primary proposition that 
the United States government has been parti- 
ceps criminis in the violation of its own funda- 
mental law. 

We hold to this incontrovertible fact and ex- 
hibit it for a purpose. If it comes about, as by 
chance it may, that millions of farmers and other 
producers shall stand out indignantly against the 
plutocracy's unjust franchises, which are grinding 
them and their families down into poverty, let 
not our comfortable middle class, under the sub- 
tle instigation of the Triumphant Plutocrats, rise 
up in high wrath and denounce these long-suffer- 
ing toilers as rebels, traitors, revolutionists and 
anarchists, who must be shot down without 
mercy. Let them not declare that this action 
of the producers is an outrage on the Constitu- 
tion and the old flag, which it is heresy to talk 



THE COMING CLIMAX 313 

of compromising. Let them remember the prec- 
edent of the violated fifteenth amendment, 
which they have patiently acquiesced in through 
all these years, and keep their patriotic rage 
within due bounds. If the crisis which we are 
now rapidly nearing is met by a tithe of the spirit 
of wise toleration, sound policy and charitable 
consideration which was shown to the South in 
the case of the fifteenth amendment, the crash 
which now impends will be robbed of all danger 
to the peace of the country. If a contrary course 
be pursued, and the plutocrats try to settle the 
issue through a brutal appeal to force, then this 
republic is destined to see some dark and bloody 
days. In the case of the fifteenth amendment, 
no influential class had a money interest in see- 
ing that this constitutional provision was car- 
ried out. But when the farmers take any 
action that menaces "vested rights," then the 
capitalists will fiercely demand that the sources 
of their unholy revenue be kept inviolate, 
though the government be brought to destruc- 
tion through the attempt. This makes a very 
sinister difference between the two cases. 

From the early days of the country, especially 
in the Mississippi valley, the people have been 



314 THE COMING CLIMAX 

swift to ignore the plain law of the land when- 
ever an emergency arose that demanded a 
promptness of action which the unwieldy mech- 
anism of the regular constituted authorities could 
not give. While mobs, regulators, white-caps 
and vigilance committees have most scandalously 
profaned the letter of the law, yet at the same 
time they respected its spirit. They said in 
effect: "The law as it stands can deal very satis- 
factorily with ordinary crimes and conditions, but 
the legal system has not the necessary flexibility 
to meet the needs of the extraordinary in human 
affairs, hence we form a vigilance committee to 
piece out its function, so that justice may be 
done, which is the final end of the law." 

In point of fact, a vigilance committee may be 
an impromptu people's court of chancery, 
created to try and determine a particular case on 
its merits and thus supply a manifest deficiency 
in the regular judicial mechanism. It is highly 
probable that if we could dig deep enough we 
should find these spontaneously organized but 
seemingly irregular courts to be based on the 
eternal equities. It is most certain that as a gen- 
eral rule they were born out of the righteous in- 
tentions of good men, and were not the handi- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 315 

work of deliberate villains, although in many in- 
stances infamous deeds have been done by them. 
At this we are not to wonder, while we know 
how facile is the evil part of our human nature 
in seizing upon chances for expression. During 
the last hundred years of the republic these popu- 
lar courts of loose jurisdiction have been of ex- 
ceedingly frequent occurrence. We have had 
lynch-law courts, regulators, abolition mobs to 
rescue fugitive slaves, pro-slavery mobs to hang 
abolition orators; anti-Catholic mobs, which 
burned down churches and convents; anti-Mor- 
mon mobs with Joe Smith martyrdoms; Astor 
Place theatrical fool riots over the merits of rival 
actors, and dead human donkeys piled up on the 
New York pavements. Then there have been 
San Francisco Vigilantes, Montana Vigilantes, 
with occasional epidemics of vigilantes all through 
the western territories and mining camps, anti- 
horse-thief associations, short of shrift but long of 
rope; New York draft riots; the ten years' reign 
of the bulldozing night-riders in the South, with 
federal and state governments as passive ap- 
provers of the usurpation ; the great Cincinnati 
mob of 1884 directed squarely against the corrupt 
administration of the laws ; bands of white-caps 



316 THE COMING CLIMAX 

acting as dubious conservators of morals in a half- 
dozen states, with a stinging whip-lash corrective 
for misdemeanants who received punishment first 
while the merits of the case were passed upon by 
the neighborhood afterwards. 

Mobs, mobs, everywhere mobs, big and little, 
briskly anticipating the regular courts and saving 
jury fees to the country, now castigating a 
recalcitrant husband, hanging a suspected negro 
or applying tar and feathers to a drab. If you 
would have a monumental illustration of our loose 
regard for governmental observances you will 
find it in the Kansas and Missouri border war of 
1855 and '56. Tens of thousands of citizens on 
each side completely ignored the fact that there 
was any such thing as a central ruling authority, 
that had supreme jurisdiction in the premises, 
and the government quite contentedly resigned 
itself to let the two factions fight out the issue, 
as to which crowd should own Kansas. So pri- 
vate duels, covert assassinations, midnight raids, 
skirmishes and battles went on, and the long- 
accustomed people took it as quite in the nat- 
ural American order of things. Lastly, take the 
recent case in New Orleans, where the respecta- 
ble citizens, the wealthy citizens, the law-abiding 



THE COMING CLIMAX 317 

Christian citizens, organized a huge and all-com- 
pelling mob, stormed the jail, and shot to death 
a dozen or more of Italian prisoners who were in 
the custody of the regularly constituted authori- 
ties. What are all these instances but more or 
less orderly and organized attempts to supersede 
or anticipate the workings of the official judicial 
mechanism, or mayhap to take action on cases 
that do not obviously come within legal jurisdic- 
tion? We give extended remark to this positive 
evidence of a lawless quality in our American 
character, because it may receive an infinitely 
larger and more dangerous expression in the 
future than it ever has in the past. Therefore it 
would be grossly impolitic to take a high ground 
toward it at this late day, because the Triumph- 
ant Plutocrats now suspect that it may receive 
manifestations that will threaten their illegal 
franchises. The banded monopolists care nothing 
at all for these tumultuous murderings, whippings 
and mobbings, that shamelessly violate the law 
of the land, so long as their own interests are 
not endangered thereby, but let the most peace- 
ful strike take place, which temporarily stops 
the output of their money-making mechanism, 
and they rise up in righteous wrath and demand 



318 THE COMING CLIMAX 

that the offenders against the majesty of law be 
at once put down without mercy. To a casual 
breach of the peace by a mob, our people pay 
but scant attention, but the plutocrats would 
have them make a special exception of such 
breaches of the peace as grow out of opposition 
to their robber charters. They would rear up 
the old aristocratic distinctions of Europe, where 
a blow given to a clumsy waiter may be quite 
proper, while to strike "my lord" is next door to 
treason. 

The Triumphant Plutocracy has inculcated 
this notion so effectually in the case of the middle 
class, that when a strike occurs against some op- 
pressive corporation, everybody shouts out: "We 
cannot endure this; it is an outrageous breaking 
of the law and the criminals must be punished 
without mercy and at once. If they do not in- 
stantly disperse, turn loose the Gatling-guns on 
them." That is the temper of our middle class to- 
day, and it is most dangerous to the peace of the 
nation. Its inconsistency is so flagrantly manifest 
that all the working millions know it, and are 
hardened into a perilous rage by its plain in- 
justice. 

There never was a time in the history of this 



THE COMING CLIMAX 319 

country when wise statesmanship, good policy, 
charity, patience and tolerant consideration for 
the organic weaknesses and inherited wrong 
tendencies of our people, were so urgently de- 
manded as to-day. In the present inflammable 
condition of society, if those conservative 
agencies are not used to the uttermost, we are 
ruined and undone, and a wave of fire and blood 
may at any time roll over this nation from sea 
to sea. The elements are already prepared for 
it and a single wrong touch may at any time turn 
them loose. 

Please keep the evil conditions sharply in 
mind. For generations we have been accustomed 
to independent and lawless action outside of the 
law. The habit of it has grown into the blood 
and thought of our people, and it has long tradi- 
tion and innumerable precedents for its warrant. 
Now we have come to a time when a new and 
terrible danger can befall us from that source. 
The old relations under which mob law was only 
a temporary inconvenience, have passed away, 
and we have arrived at a period when vigilance 
committees may .easily assume national propor- 
tions and quickly change the face and condition 
of the country. Let any man of philosophic 



320 THE COMING CLIMAX 

mind inform himself as to the social, political 
and industrial status of the republic, and then 
laugh at this prophecy of possible calamity if he 
dafe. 

Please look the situation squarely in its front. 
In the old days, bands of regulators and vigi- 
lance committees were local affairs, and rose 
from local causes which had no connection with 
other communities. The members of these spon- 
taneous courts of chancery respected the laws 
and authorities ; they were apologetic to society as 
they did their fierce tasks, and they excused their 
acts on the ground of the insufficiency or slowness 
of strictly legal methods in meeting urgent cases. 
That outlaw-taint which is in the blood of all of 
us alike, from high to humble, from rich to poor, 
has now a stupendous and appalling opportunity 
inviting it, such as was never known before in 
all the experience of the republic. Millions of 
producers are banded together into fraternal 
societies, practically one mighty organization 
through their common hopes and fears. The 
farmers, the railway-men, the miners, the me- 
chanics, the factory operatives, together with all 
other industrial toilers, are now welded into unity 
by a knowledge of their indestructible solidarity 



THE COMING CLIMAX 321 

of interest. An intense feeling of brotherhood 
is constantly growing among them, and every 
day an injury to one is more thoroughly felt to 
be the concern of all. If a gang of Pinkerton 
thugs, in obedience to a corporation tyrant, shoot 
down outraged railway-men in Albany, or mur- 
der defrauded coal miners in Pennsylvania, a 
wave of hot wrath sweeps across the continent, 
that submerges and inflames every intelligent and 
free-hearted producer in the land; and the 
farmer of the Florida everglades and the woods- 
man in the deep forests of Oregon alike set their 
teeth and clinch their fists in kindred rage. 
The alliance of the working classes of America is 
complete, and in this homogeneity is either the 
peace or peril of our republic. These men declare 
that evil and undemocratic laws have been passed 
by the plutocracy for its own special advantage 
and against the well-being of the producers. They 
also affirm that existing laws, wholesome in 
their intent, have been perverted by it to the 
detriment of the masses whom they were or- 
dained to bless. And they furthermore avow, 
that the Triumphant Plutocracy has practically 
subverted Washington's republic, and that a 
government of the people, by the people, 

21 



323 THE COMING CLIMAX 

and for the people, no longer exists. Here 
are all the essential materials and conditions 
to create a national vigilance committee when 
the hour strikes and the provocation comes, 
tingling through those millions of banded 
workers like an electric shock. Then will 
they start forth, not to destroy the law, but 
to fulfill it; not to tear down our democratic 
government, but to purify and renovate it; not 
to overthrow the Constitution, but to give it liv- 
ing effect; not to make wreckage of Christian 
civilization, but to save it from the ruin that now 
threatens. On their banner shall be inscribed 
liberty, equal laws, human progress and the 
maintenance of the republic of the fathers. 

We write of this possible eventuality, because 
we would avert it while yet there is time. Any 
such deplorable event will be as criminally need- 
less as was the civil war. It will set back the 
orderly progress of the nation. A crop of moral 
scourges would come of such fierce rending of 
the subsoil of society, just as certainly as they 
followed our war of the rebellion. Only one 
good thing can be said of such a destructive up- 
heaval, and that is, that it would be an immeas- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 323 

urable improvement over the leprosy of pluto- 
cratic despotism which now menaces us. 

But there is still time to save the country 
from the calamity of either one of these curses, 
if the good men and true, who make a clear 
majority of all the people in the land, will now 
rise up and do their plain duty to God's law and 
man's right. The Almighty Father, out of his 
abundant kindness, has given us bounteous crops. 
We have another year of grace in which the 
people can think and act on full stomachs. 
Only a fool will declare that one bountiful harvest 
has disposed of a discontent and misery which 
have been growing and deepening for long years. 
One substantial meal will not carry even a 
tramp through three months of winter. What 
plutocratic optimist dare affirm, for next year, 
abundant crops on this side with corresponding 
scarcity abroad? Our case is not one to be met 
by ephemeral palliatives. We must go down 
deep into the domain of eternal justice between 
man and man, if we would find abiding relief and 
absolute safety for the country's future. 

The doing of this duty to the uttermost will 
be all too stern a task for the plausible charla- 
tans, whose bastard statesmanship has put our 



324 THE COMING CLIMAX 

country on the high road to perdition. If we 
are to be saved from ruin, there must be an- 
other uprising of the great plain people; and then 
it will be as it always has been when the masses 
fully recognized their danger and stood up like 
men to meet it. 

Heroes before unknown will come forward from 
their own ranks, whose brave hearts will front the 
peril without blenching, and whose strong hands 
will grapple triumphantly with the labor that is 
given them to do. 



CHAPTER XVII 

IN ORDER OF BATTLE 

"The development of inequality in this country as the result of the 
concentration of wealth in the hands of a small class, has developed two 
social tendencies which are in diametrical opposition, and must event- 
ually come into collision, and when they do it will be with a similar re- 
sult to that which would follow an encounter between a peachblow vase 
and an avalanche under full headway." — [Edward Bellamy, /» "The 
New Nation." 

The maximum of certainty as to an approach- 
ing conflict is felt by the men who stand at the 
far extremes of society. 

The multi-millionaire, whose income is condi- 
tioned upon the peaceful toiling of an army of 
workers, guards his interests by keeping accu- 
rately informed of their state of mind through 
the reports of shrewd spies. He knows their 
animus is one of wrathful discontent, and this is 
substantially true of their class everywhere. 
Hence the corporation lord is aware that the 
general situation is ugly, and forebodes a collision 
of greater or less magnitude. He is all the surer 
that a crash is inevitable, because he is the other 
party whose existence is necessary in order to 

325 



326 THE COMING CLIMAX 

make a fight; and as he is fully determined not 
to surrender the least of his present advantages, 
even if permanent peace and absolute safety 
for the future could be secured thereby, he 
knows that trouble is coming. 

The man out of employment, the unskilled 
worker, the mechanic who searches for toil and 
becomes demoralized by not finding it, the 
locked-out operative, the person of education 
who has lost his calling, friends and good repute, 
the host of men who, through lack of endow- 
ment or in default of training, are merely grown- 
up children in the competitive scramble that 
results from an overplus of labor, may be summed 
up as making the opposite social pole from the 
millionaire. This composite creature we will, 
for want of a more fitting name, term, tramp. 

This strange and unnatural being in a well- 
ordered society believes that a class-struggle is 
near at hand, and welcomes it yearningly, for 
he knows that while present conditions persist 
he must remain an outcast from the sweetness 
and light of civilization, and be hard put at times 
to secure even butterless bread. Hence his only 
hope rests in a universal catastrophe; and per- 
chance its baleful flames may disclose a path to 



THE COMING CLIMAX 327 

kindlier destinies. Our good people to whom 
good clothes, good beds and good food come so 
natural that an occasional prayer of thanks 
squares the debt with Deity, because they lay 
the main credit of their comfortable state to per- 
sonal good management, are singularly obtuse as 
to the danger that now threatens society from a 
peculiar human crop that our country has grown 
in the last twenty-five years. This product of 
the greatest and richest civilization known to 
history, is what is generically termed the tramp 
horde, and is loosely estimated anywhere from 
1,500,000 to 3,000,000 in number. Our defini- 
tion of a tramp is so large and generous that it 
includes every person who is homeless and hun- 
gry, and either begs the price of a meal out of 
hand or asks the chance to do an odd job in or- 
der to earn one. We also include all the sham- 
bling, tatterdemalion crew who of late are get- 
ting so uncomfortably numerous in the streets 
of our great cities. They may be drearily trudg- 
ing along after the manner of their forlorn kind, 
with downcast head and despondent slouch, 
without word or look for any one, making the 
saddest sight that man can see who calls all men 
brothers. Still they are but tramps, and we give 



328 THE COMING CLIMAX 

no thought to the invisible causes that made the 
visible record of the fact It matters nothing to 
us that a year ago they might have been working 
contentedly in a cracker, linseed-oil or white lead 
factory, whose proprietor closed down because he 
was paid as much by a big trust to let his plant 
lie idle as he could make by running it. This 
circumstance does not alter the fact that the one- 
time workingman is now a tramp. We Ameri- 
cans are regular Gradgrinds in our respect for 
facts, and decline to let mawkish sentiment tone 
down their rough edges. Any man out of work 
and money is liable to become a public nuisance; 
we have no time to listen to his tedious stories; 
so we dispose of the case in the shortest way, 
by making him a criminal and locking him up, 
as is done under the benign laws of Iowa and 
Connecticut. 

Boston owns a very worthy institution called 
the "Wayfarers' Rest." Here the stranger with- 
out money can come as the night falls, and by 
doing a reasonable amount of woodsawing, 
squarely earn his supper, lodging and breakfast. 
Bums, sots and undeserving vagabonds are 
barred from this retreat, because it is intended 



THE COMING CLIMAX 320 

for the relief of decent men to whom the world 
has not been kind. A register for guests is kept 
at this hotel, the same as at all others, but with 
somewhat more of detail. The occupation or 
previous calling of the casual visitor is made a 
matter of record, and so data are gathered which 
should be of considerable interest to our phil- 
anthropic sociologists. The thousands of lodgers, 
who avail themselves of that refuge for a night 
or so, are human wreckage from all classes and 
conditions of men. At first glance it is a sub- 
ject for surprise that such a large percentage of 
this flotsam comes from the respectable classes. 
There are ex-ministers, ex-members of congress, 
ex-bankers, ex-editors, ex-lawyers, ex-mer- 
chants, ex-manufacturers, ex-school-teachers, 
ex-clerks, ex-book-keepers, together with a host 
of ex-incumbents of positions in all intellectual 
occupations. There are few ex-gamblers, ex-bur- 
glars or ex-dive-keepers, because crime shows 
fewer bankrupts nowadays than do the honor- 
able vocations. 

There must be some substantial reason for 
this ever-increasing number of tramps who have 
seen vastly better days. It is brutally illogical 
to declare that the causes which produce them 



330 THE COMING CLIMAX 

lie altogether within themselves, and that exter- 
nal conditions over which they have no control 
are not in any degree responsible for their abject 
failure in life. The comfortably circumstanced 
classes that accept this explanation with avidity, 
and thereby relieve their consciences of the onus 
of a denied duty in the premises, utterly fail to 
see the inexorable drift of their own logic. If 
it indeed be true that in the second decade of 
the second century of the American republic, 
native-born citizens of good family, fair educa- 
tion and sound moral training show an increas- 
ing tendency to lapse into pauperdom, then is it 
proved that our nation has passed its maturity 
and is already on the decline toward dusty 
death. There is no escape from this conclusion 
on the part of the good people who account for 
this tramp scourge on the mixed ground of in- 
temperance, laziness and vice. When Dickens 
was here fifty years ago, he remarked that there 
was not a beggar in the country, and persons 
not yet of middle age can remember when a 
tramp was a curiosity. We are not ready to 
believe that the American republic has lived out 
its life, hence we classify the tramp pest as 
merely one of many signs of a national house- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 331 

keeping that is dangerously bad. The unrestricted 
field for individual ambition, which existed when 
our goverment truly incarnated the democratic 
idea, is now a barren theory and not an actual 
fact. The wonderful natural development of the 
country and the consequent stratification of 
society on pecuniary lines, together with the de- 
struction of the old social and industrial equilib- 
rium, by the rise of great corporations and enor- 
mous individual fortunes, which in their totality 
make the Triumphant Plutocracy that domi- 
nates the national life in its every phase — all 
these are directly responsible for certain malign 
changes that have taken place in the republic, 
which make the America of fifty years ago and 
the America of to-day as radically dissimilar as 
the Rome of brave Horatius and the Rome plun- 
dered by Alaric. 

By means of our common schools, academies, 
colleges, libraries, free reading-rooms and pleth- 
ora of newspapers and periodicals, we continue 
to turn out increasing numbers of reasonably 
well-educated young men who are proud of liv- 
ing in a democratic land, where a poor boy can 
start in as a mule-driver on a canal, and bring 
up as President of the United States. All these 



332 THE COMING CLIMAX 

young men keep their eyes up and aspire after 
the best there is in sight. Many of them shun 
farm work and the manual trades, because under 
our spurious civilization honest toil is not "gen- 
teel," so they seek honored careers as lawyers, 
doctors, ministers, manufacturers, merchants, 
politicians, clerks, board-of-trade gamblers, stock 
speculators and competitors in all other occupa- 
tions where men can earn a living and not get 
their hands calloused. The steady concentration 
of wealth and consolidation of business enter- 
prises, now going on, tends to decrease the demand 
for clerical workers, while the supply is constantly 
augmenting. The professions are overcrowded, 
and the country swarms with men who are 
competent for all sorts of intellectual vocations 
but who can obtain no employment. Our towns 
and villages are filled with young men waiting for 
something to turn up that is worth their taking. 
In the smaller places living is cheap, parents 
have homes, and as long as the young men re- 
main there they have security in a profitless odd- 
job, clerking, shabbily dressed, death-in-life 
existence that is a thing of horror to any young 
man of true ambition. They are not to be 
blamed, for under the present order of society 



THE COMING CLIMAX 333 

it is the best the average young man can do, and 
he shows his wisdom in staying at home rather 
than going out into the world to fare worse. In 
these times only the young man with an excep- 
tional endowment of force, patience and talent 
can break through the opposing barriers and com- 
pel success. But what of the others? Hundreds 
of thousands of them go forth from their homes 
every year, with that brave self-confidence that 
is so distinctively American, and try conclusions 
with fortune. They aim to secure remunerative, 
intellectual occupations. A slim percentage are 
successful; far more manage to hang precariously 
on the skirts of some kind of business, while many 
fail utterly. Where do these latter ones go? 
They reach out after some clerical or professional 
place, and not catching it, drop straight down 
through all the grades of manual toil in which 
they are totally unskilled, and never stop until 
they land in the sub-cellar of humanity, where 
herd and hive the slimy denizens of trampdom. 
Here they adjust themselves to a new order of 
existence, which the clean and well-fed world 
knows nothing of. Its details are simple and 
easy, when compared with the toilsome lot of 
a man who thinks he has failed unless each 



384 THE COMING CLIMAX 

morrow finds him more solidly placed than he 
was the day before. The initiated vagrant enters 
upon a life divested of all the old-time worry, so 
soon as he is resigned to his lost respectability. 
Ten cents a day and a coal hole at night 
solve all his problems, and he soon comes to 
confidently rely on shrewd beggary or chance 
odd jobs to pull him through. 

As will be seen in the evidence furnished in 
the case of the Boston "Wayfarers' Rest," men 
of all ages, who from any cause have fallen by 
the way, gravitate at once to the condition of 
tramps. We read in the newspaper now and 
then the story of an interview with a well-edu- 
cated wanderer who is homeless and penniless. 
Thoughtless people regard the circumstance as 
quite remarkable and immediately declare that 
there was a big screw loose somewhere or he 
could not have fallen so low. They are right 
in their surmise as to mechanism out of gear, 
but they may be wrong in locating it. The 
tramp census has never been accurately taken 
yet, and we are much afraid that when these 
social bankrupts do swarm forth from their lairs 
and assemble where they could be counted, there 
will be such tragic events going on that no one 



THE COMING CLIMAX 335 

will have time to enumerate them. We refer at 
length to this slumping down into trampdom on 
the part of large numbers of men who from birth, 
rearing and honest intentions deserved a happier 
fate, because there is danger in the fact to the 
future of the republic. These unclassed men 
are perforce thrown into association with the 
lowest waged and most ignorant toilers, and 
through their bitterness against organized society 
they become terribly effective propagandists of 
revolution. They denounce the rich as being 
the oppressive rulers of the republic, who must 
be put away before humble folks can have the 
rights and comforts that belong to them. It is 
safe to say that the influence of these sinister 
instructors reaches three millions of the same kind 
of men that leveled the Bastile and chopped off 
the head of Louis XVI. If the perils were limited 
to this class, we could quickly dispose of it on 
atheistic lines by killing a few hundred thousand 
of them out of hand wherever the excuse was 
given. But it so happens that where their 
menace leaves off, that of the millions of organ- 
ized producers begins. Not that the farmers 
have the slightest revolutionary or rebellious 
intent, for all thought of lawlessness is far from 



336 THE COMING CLIMAX 

them, and they will strive to the very last to 
redress their grievances by the constitutional 
means of the ballot. If there is never a war in 
the nation until the farmers and workingmen 
begin it, our country has assurance of eternal 
peace. But who will answer for the Triumphant 
Plutocrats ? Who dare say that they will not so 
shamelessly violate the Constitution that a na- 
tional vigilance committee of the great plain peo- 
ple will be forced to step to the front, rescue re- 
publican liberty and save the imperiled prosperity 
of the masses? Who shall answer for the unfore- 
seeable necromancy of accident, which plays so 
momentous a part in the history of nations? We 
know by their open and organized declarations, 
that millions of producers do now brand the plu- 
tocrats as tyrants and usurpers in the American 
republic. If there be any subject more serious 
than this for our people, we know not what it is. 
It is the one terrible and overshadowing fact in 
our national life to-day, and it will be suicide 
to ignore it much longer. A few years ago, and 
our flamboyant Fourth of July orators habitually 
worked themselves up into a fine frenzy of elo- 
quence when speaking of the free and unbounded 
opportunities offered to the poor of all the earth, 



THE COMING CLIMAX 337 

by the great and undeveloped American con- 
tinent, which was capable of supporting a thous- 
and million people in comfort. We have now 
a trifle over 60,000,000 inhabitants, and lo and 
behold, our resources are exhausted. Not only 
is this the case, but the republican table will no 
longer supply the members of its own family, 
and several millions must go hungry, while a 
still larger number only get half a meal. 

Only twenty years ago, politico-economic patri- 
ots exuberantly figured it out, that every healthy 
and muscular foreigner who came to our shores 
seeking work, made the country $10,000 richer 
the moment he landed in Gastle Garden. It did 
not matter whether he had a cent in his pocket 
or shirt to his back ; his strong and willing hands 
were wealth-creating capital of the very first 
order, and lacking which, capital of the second 
order, in the shape of gold, lands, houses, tools 
and machinery, became utterly valueless. This 
is an exceedingly sound proposition, and the 
entire Edward Atkinson school of plutocratic 
political economists cannot budge it one jot or 
tittle, for it shall stand solid so long as the labor 
of man puts a living soul into inert matter. 

It was noticeable that our Fourth of July elo- 

22 



338 THE COMING CLIMAX 

cutionists of 1891 had much to say of the danger 
of pauper immigration, and all agreed that the 
laws which had been built up to bar it out must 
be additionally strengthened and rigidly enforced. 
So now it has come to pass that when an eager 
pilgrim arrives as a steerage passenger, whose 
only capital is of the muscular first order, he is 
promptly bundled back whence he came. On 
the other hand, the first cabin foreigner, with 
a hand-bag full of gold, is welcomed with open 
arms. It is distinctly understood that this 
man, who is freighted with capital of the second 
order, does not propose to produce anything by 
his own labor. He comes as a public benefactor 
to set other fellows at work, and after he has 
allowed them a bare living for the privilege of 
toiling, he will frugally gather together the major 
portion of the wealth created by them, and take 
it abroad and have a good time on it. This tribe 
of English aristocratic drones, by shrewd invest- 
ments in American lands, railways, mines and 
trusts, now draws upwards of $150,000,000 an- 
nually from this country, and we continue to hail 
with delight every fresh installment of inert capi- 
tal which comes here from Europe, notwithstand- 
ing the plain fact that it tends to establish a 



THE COMING CLIMAX 339 

perpetual tax on the productive resources of the 
nation. If this diabolical tendency is allowed 
to go on unrestrained much longer, our indus- 
trial classes will ultimately find themselves in the 
condition of the Hindoo ryots, who have enjoyed 
the blessed rule of English capital for the last 
hundred years or more. This oriental toiler gets 
five cents a day, and lives almost exclusively on 
rice when it is plentiful, while if there be a short 
crop he starves to death. If the present drift of 
events goes on unchecked for fifty years more, 
the average American laborer will get ten cents 
for a day's work and have corn-meal mush for 
a steady diet, unless some cheaper food can be 
found. 

With what swiftness of insight we saw the 
politico-economic peril brought by a few thou- 
sand Chinamen, whose further increase we im- 
mediately walled out, and yet the Chinaman came 
here solely to work. He made no investments 
in interest-bearing securities, which would ena- 
ble him to enjoy life as a luxurious drone at the 
expense of others. No, he turned in and began 
to toil, and despite his wish he was compelled 
to spend more or less money in the country, 
while every dollar he finally took back to China 



340 THE COMING CLIMAX 

was made by his own muscular exertion; the 
gold he drained out of America represented no 
white toiler's sweat. Yet, forsooth, the China- 
man must go, while the English lord remains in 
the shape of his invested capital, which continues 
to leech the life-blood of prosperity out of the 
nation. The foreign capitalist riots on the fruits 
of American industry, for the mere use of money, 
and money is but a tool of trade, which this re- 
public can create without limit, for the behoof of 
its own citizens, so that all the wealth produced 
by them would remain in the country and never 
go abroad, except to be returned by other 
wealth equal in value. This amazing stupidity 
and unreasoning inconsistency, on the part of the 
republic, is one of the causes of the social and 
economic upheaval that is now upon us. Com- 
petent observers who are anxiously watching the 
ever-changing manifestations of the industrial 
revolution, which has now plainly begun all over 
the civilized world, declare positively that it 
will make its first general expression and receive 
its first equitable solution in the United States 
of America. This will be the case because the 
evolutionary forces which are now pushing man- 
kind upward to nobler levels of being, have freer 



THE COMING CLIMAX 341 

play in our country than elsewhere. For how- 
ever much the democratic idea may have van- 
ished from the practice of the republic under the 
reign of the Triumphant Plutocrats, it is still 
grudgingly recognized by them as contributing 
color and quality to our theory of government. 
They give it the same mock reverence and actual 
contempt, which the all-puissant Mayors of the 
Palace gave to the Merovingian line of phantom 
kings whom they handled like puppets. But 
there is one place where the democratic idea rules 
without a rival, and that is in the hearts of the 
great common people of America. The full 
strength of their devotion to it has never been 
tested to the limit. It has met all demands 
made upon it like the flint that gives out fire in 
exact proportion with the friction applied. No 
draft upon its resources has ever been dishon- 
ored, and when its hour of supreme test comes, 
as come it must at last, we believe that it will 
show forth an all-commanding power that shall 
not only be the wonder of future ages, but will 
likewise amaze the generation of men that does 
the task, by its revelation of the heroic capacity 
that slumbered within them. 

The aristocratic masters of Europe and Amer- 



342 THE COMING CLIMAX 

ica seemingly ignore the greatest of all the teach- 
ings of the French revolution. 

It was not the swift facility with which an op- 
pressed people can rise up and overthrow their 
tyrants. It was not in the demonstration of the 
bloody revenge which an outraged commonalty 
can exact for long-continued wrongs. It was 
not the craze for chimerical experimenting which 
comes to emancipated masses suddenly made 
rulers. It was not the ease with which a master- 
ful dictator turned a tumultuous populace from 
the frenzied worship of abstract liberty to an 
equal adoration for concrete absolutism. No, 
it was none of these. The true lesson of the 
French revolution, that shall shine deathless 
above the centuries for the eternal hope of the 
downtrodden lowly, is the superhuman energy, 
courage and sacrifice that were germed by its 
democratic idea. All these found lodgment in 
the souls of millions of long-degraded French- 
men. But while the soil was rich for growth it 
lacked in those elements which give beauty, 
symmetry and vitality. Its fruitage, forced un- 
timely by the fierce heat of the revolution, soon 
withered under the fell touch of Napoleon, and 
the monarchist said, "Behold, how swiftly popu- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 343 

lar government dies." It died, and the Bourbon 
came again for a few days, and the Orleans 
dynasty came for a few days, and a ghastly 
phantom of the great Bonaparte came for a few 
days, but now all these have joined the host of 
kingly specters in the night of the past, and the 
French republic stands, and the tremendous 
energy of its democratic idea endures, and is 
working slowly, steadily and resistlessly towards 
the incarnation of Rousseau's dream of a diviner 
order of society, where liberty, equality and 
justice shall be the inalienable portion of all men. 
Through 250 years of sunshine and storm the 
great tap-roots of American democracy have been 
steadily enlarging in girth, broadening and deep- 
ening in reach. They underlie our political insti- 
tutions; they are interwoven with the complexi- 
ties of our business, social and religious life; they 
give fiber and strength to all the elements which 
make up the composite whole of our civiliza- 
tion. The American republic is the pioneer 
nation of the human race. It is the hope of the 
universal world; and here — in the land where the 
democratic idea has received noblest expression 
— must the ages-old problem of "How to give 
every man his right in organized society" be first 
solved. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE GAGE OF WAR 

"What we most need is not a society for the education of the ignorant, 
but a society for the enlightenment of the educated. If the wise ones of 
this world will not open their eyes to their selfishness, injustice and bru- 
tality, they will be met by the same on the part of the rapidly awaken- 
ing Calibans; and in the ruin of our civilization, in a downfall worse than 
that of Rome, may be destroyed not only the bad, but also the good that 
has been built up by the ages. "—William Schuyler, in "The Open 
Courts 

The night after the unveiling of the Grant 
monument in Chicago, Ex-Senator Ingalls lect- 
ured to a cultured, critical and admiring crowd 
in the great Auditorium. In the course of the 
address he reiterated his oft-repeated declaration 
that unless the present antagonism of interest 
between capital and labor was reconciled by wise 
statesmanship, our country was in danger of pass- 
ing through horrors which would make those of 
the civil war seem trivial. We do not refer to 
Mr. Ingalls' words of fear as being exceptional, 
for similar utterances from the platform are now 
frequent, and paragraphs that express like senti- 
ments have recently become common in our daily 

press and periodicals. The alarming feature of 
344 



THE COMIHG CLIMAX 345 

this consensus of opinion as to a dread peril con- 
fronting us, consists in the fact that it is unac- 
companied by any definite surmise, either as to 
the nature of the catastrophe, the avenues by 
which it may come, or the means by which it 
might be averted. The Americans have well 
earned the reputation of being the most practical 
and calculating people on the face of the earth. 
The individual, in taking good care of his own 
personal interests, is peculiarly a creature of 
foresight, and looks as far into the future as his 
mortal eyes may see. He has a keen regard to 
remote contingencies, and prepares for them in 
advance. He strives to forecast the trend of 
events, and looks out for all possible emergen- 
cies. But when it comes to a consideration of the 
future well-being of the nation at large, he shirks 
all personal responsibility in the premises, and 
lets chance shape its destiny as it will. This las- 
situde and inertness in the presence of peril, this 
absence of any attempt at constructive thought 
for the needs of the nation's coming years, this 
universal denial of a conscientious duty to unborn 
generations, this deliberate refusal to follow out 
the logic of certain terrible facts — these make 
in their totality a national crime that leaves the 



346 THE COMING CLIMAX 

door open to an appalling calamity which will be 
a just national punishment. 

A mixture of emotions and influences is prob- 
ably responsible for the astounding supineness of 
our citizens at the present time. All of the well- 
off people are so comfortable under present con- 
ditions that they childishly resent any intrusion 
of evidence that goes to prove the critical situa- 
tion of the country at large. There is no un- 
chained proletariat now ravaging the cities, the 
railway-men have not locked every wheel in the 
country, and the outraged farmers are not form- 
ing a national vigilance committee for the rescue 
of the imperiled republic. So perhaps, it is 
reasoned, if we go on with our profitable busi- 
ness affairs and continue to enjoy our social 
pleasures, all these tokens of storm may blow 
over and no harm done. The sinister blotch on 
the cheek may be only a pimple and not the 
dread sign of incurable cancer, so keep away from 
the physician and mayhap all will be well. 

The plutocratic press now avers that one 
good crop has made the country absolutely safe 
and prosperous for all time to come, and yet not 
one single debatable question between the pro- 
ducers and the plutocrats either has been or can 



THE COMING CLIMAX 347 

be determined by it. This proposition is so 
plainly axiomatic that extended argument on it 
would be intolerable to an intelligent under- 
standing. How will one crop tend to make the 
grasping railway owners cease to tax the traffic 
more than it will bear? How will it prevent the 
bankers from locking up money and practicing 
Shylock usury? How will it raise wages all 
along the line and make the future interests of a 
mining corporation one with those of its work- 
ers? The stern issue between capital and labor 
lies far out of the reach of one good crop. That 
our well-off classes welcome this paltry fiction as 
a real solution, and have given it idiotic una- 
nimity of credence, is an almost certain indica- 
tion that black days are indeed close upon us. 

The writer has now arrived at a point in his 
work, where the continued prosecution of his 
task makes it necessary that he should turn his 
back on the past and go fearlessly forward into 
the future. Long before coming to this inevit- 
able parting of the ways, it became the subject 
of his solemn concern as to how he could best 
do his duty to his God, his country and his fel- 
low-men in extending the scope of his treatise 



348 THE COMING CLIMAX 

onward into the realm of the problematical. The 
question arose as to whether it might not be the 
better plan to clearly point out existing evils, 
and while emphasizing their undoubted tendency 
to increase in magnitude and multiply in destruct- 
iveness, yet stop short when it came to giving 
circumstantial details as to possible national 
calamities that might flow out from them. Then 
the writer reflected that this was now being done 
on an extended scale, both by the reform orators 
and press, and also to some extent by demo- 
cratic and republican daily newspapers, which on 
occasion have their fling at the monopolists, trusts 
and plutocrats in general, and hint obscurely at 
coming disaster unless something be done to 
check the arrogant power of concentrated wealth. 
In his dilemma the author sought a friend of 
much wisdom, whose heart beats warm and 
strong for the cause of human progress, and this 
was his counsel: "You know that I have an ex- 
pensive family which is dependent upon a salary 
that I would lose instantly if I became known 
as an advocate of reform principles and openly 
spoke of the dangers which I believe now 
threaten the country. The welfare of those 
dearer to me than life keeps my lips closed, yet 



THE COMING CLIMAX 349 

I feel at times that my silence is criminal. For 
you there is no such excuse, and if you now fail 
to tell the whole truth which it is given you to 
see, you not only become a coward, but are rec- 
reant to a plain duty that is manifestly yours to 
perform." And according as he advised even 
so shall it be. 

In our forecasting we shall keep tight rein on 
the imagination, and sketch no pictures of possi- 
ble eventualities that are not warranted over and 
over again by the hard logic of existing facts, 
conditions and tendencies. We shall hold our- 
selves rigidly within cause-and-effect lines in 
making prediction as to coming events, and will 
merely look ahead into the national life and 
strive to reason out its possibilities just as a 
man would do in his own affairs. 

Twenty years ago the prognostications we 
shall make would have been laughed at as the 
wild vaporings of a scatter-brained crank, but 
we doubt if the funny paragrapher of to-day finds 
a large amount of material in the stock we offer 
him. There is not much chance for the fanciful 
play of the humorist in the relations that now 
obtain between the plutocrats and producers, 
and it is observed that when a monopoly organ 



350 THE COMING CLIMAX 

fastens a jest on the organized toilers, it is 
barbed and has a waspish sting. There is a 
vague fear abroad in the land which resents en- 
lightenment by the means of unwelcome truth. 
Many years ago, at Natchez, Miss., and a few 
weeks after the fall of Vicksburg, the writer and 
a comrade, while wandering through a church- 
yard, fell into conversation with some bright 
Southern boys on their way to Sunday-school. 
In talking of the omnipresent subject of the war, 
one of the youngsters artlessly said, "My father 
was the first one to bring the news that the 
Yankees had captured Vicksburg, and the peo- 
ple came near putting him in jail." The heralds 
with bad tidings have a dreary task, and it was 
always an extra hazardous risk to inform a brutal 
monarch of feudal days, that his army had been 
cut to pieces. One after another of the courtiers 
would refuse the job, until at last mayhap the 
tyrant's poor old mother was prevailed upon to 
undertake it, as being the least liable to feel 
the weight of his mailed hand. Speculating as 
to the precise nature of the disasters which 
might befall the republic, and locating their 
appearance as near by, has been tacitly set down 
as a tabooed subject. This shrinking from a 



THE COMING CLIMAX 351 

manly effort to follow the drift of present events 
into the future is a bad sign of the times, because 
it acknowledges a fear that we will not openly 
confess. It indicates a dread of finding perils 
with which we cannot successfully grapple. It 
is putting away the thought of inevitable ills, 
that the passing hour may be made the happier. 
From the windows of the castle of St. Ger- 
main, Louis XIV had ever in view the cathedral 
of St, Denis, where reposed the bodies of a long 
line of his kingly predecessors, and where his own 
tomb lay waiting its occupant. To get away 
from this perpetual reminder of his mortality, 
he built the palace of Versailles. There was fair 
excuse for the self-indulgent despot, because 
death could not be evaded, but there is none in 
the case of a people who timorously shut their 
eyes to threatening calamities, which could be 
made harmless by a valiant going-forth to meet 
them. This foolish ban upon a full and free 
inquisition into our country's future, we shall 
boldly break, because the peace and prosperity 
of the republic imperatively demands it. 

In entering upon the consideration of the pos- 
sible evils that may befall the nation, three con- 



352 THE COMING CLIMAX 

ditions, which have no connection with each other 
save through their common relation to the gen- 
eral subject, should be sharply borne in mind. 
The first condition is the present nice complexity 
of our industrial, commercial and financial sys- 
tems, whose ramifications extend all throughout 
the nation, and make in their practical working 
one complete and highly intricate organism. 
It is a piece of mechanism composed of many 
parts, all of which are interdependent, conse- 
quently a breakage in any one particular affects 
every other function and destroys the efficiency 
of the whole. Seventy-five years ago all of the 
New England states might have been sunk a 
thousand fathoms deep in the Atlantic Ocean 
without affecting the material well-being of the 
people living in the Mississippi Valley, whereas 
now the simultaneous failure of a dozen Boston 
banks would send a wave of financial panic 
sweeping over the entire republic. Our busi- 
ness machinery is so finely organized and deli- 
cately adjusted, that a casual shock may get it 
out of order at once, as we ascertained during 
the railway strikes of 1877. Hence it behoves 
us to give it special care, for the smooth work- 
ing of our governmental system is largely de- 
pendent upon it. 



THE COMING CLIMAX 353 

The second condition to be carried in mind is 
that millions of American producers believe that 
an all-pervading rottenness has eaten the pure 
and healthful life out of our political and judi- 
cial systems, because knaves fill the places that 
should be held by honest men. Consequently 
the toiling masses are in an attitude of distrust 
and disaffection toward the governing powers, 
which fact, when supplemented by the natural 
tendencies of our people to take the law into 
their own hands, constitutes an element of 
danger to the peace of the country which no 
wise patriot should overlook. 

The third sinister condition which is worthy 
of careful remembrance, is that the millionaires 
now dictate the actions of all municipal, coun- 
ty, state and government officials at their will. 
That is to say, they rule the country absolutely 
as an oligarchy of despots; hence the temper, 
disposition, motives and general animus of these 
plutocrats become positive factors in determining 
the destiny of the nation. What manner of men 
are they? It is unfortunately the fact that the 
average millionaire is in the first place a 
thoroughly unscrupulous man, and cares nothing 
as to the means by which he gains his ends. 
2 3 



354 THE COMING CLIMAX 

He does not believe that God has established 
any moral code for the government of man, be- 
cause his brutal nature is utterly incapable of 
comprehending a divine order that inculcates 
the practice of justice, charity and mercy. The 
millionaire is a materialist, and of the earth, 
earthy, and if his intellectual faculties be culti- 
vated, they act as the exclusive servants of his 
selfishness. If he accept a church creed it is 
one out of which the living and loving Jesus has 
been banished, so that while he may become a 
bigot in religion, he still remains an infidel in 
his intercourse with mankind. The millionaire 
is dishonest, greedy and cruel, and believes in 
no agencies save craft, gold and force. He would 
remorselessly slaughter millions of lowly people 
if he could thereby establish his tyrant rule on 
an unshakable foundation. At the time of the 
railroad riots of 1877, when the working force 
of the city of Chicago was in a condition ot vague 
tumult, the militia were called out and the city 
practically placed under martial law. During the 
few days in which it was feared that a collision 
might take place between the soldiery and the 
populace, the majority of Chicago's millionaires 
made the parlors of the Grand Pacific hotel a tern- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 355 

porary club-room. The troops on that occasion 
were fortunately commanded by a distinguished 
officer of the late war who is at once tender and 
brave. This honored general was requested by 
the anxious plutocrats to call at their club-room 
from time to time and report the situation of 
affairs. On one occasion, when it was certainly 
expected there would be a clash of arms, the 
general returned from the front and entered the 
club-room. There was a rush toward him from 
all quarters and a score of millionaires shouted 
out simultaneously, "Have you shot anybody 
yet?" The general replied that he saw no 
necessity for shooting into a crowd of working 
people, who were peacefully standing on the 
sidewalks doing no harm. At this information 
the millionaires were most grievously disgusted. 
They wanted blood and lots of it. Any one who 
knows the tigerish nature of the plutocrats will 
bear out my affirmation, that if this good gen- 
eral had told them that he was compelled to 
open fire on the rioters with artillery, Gatling- 
guns and musketry, and had killed two or three 
thousand men, women and children, the million- 
aires would have been delighted to the very bot- 
tom of their flinty hearts. They might in words 



356 THE COMING CLIMAX 

have expressed a hypocritical regret, but their 
feelings would be those of unmixed congratula- 
tion, for they would flatter themselves that their 
unholy franchises had been made safer by this 
wholesale massacre. 

The plutocrats believe in killing opposition by 
shooting down all who protest against their op- 
pressions, and in the present critical emergency 
their absolute authority in the republic, con- 
joined to a murderousness of intent and policy, 
adds the last and greatest element of peril to a 
situation that would be dangerously alarming 
even without it. 

This book never would have been written but 
for the author's firm conviction that the pluto- 
crats intend to force matters with a high hand 
just so soon as a plausible excuse is offered, 
through which they can justify themselves to 
the great middle class and secure their support. 
It is the necessity of our aristocratic oligarchy 
to push the issue between themselves and the 
producers to a final determination. They never 
will be at ease until all the present franchises and 
charters, by which they legally pillage the people, 
are safe within the fortified camp of a strong gov- 
ernment that is pledged to protect them against 



THE COMING CLIMAX 357 

all foes, whether the same be the national Con- 
gress or a national vigilance committee. 

The irrepressible conflict is on, and the plu- 
tocrats know it. They are preparing for a 
physical combat between themselves and the 
producers. These are strong words, but they 
have the solid facts behind them. Men who 
have means for knowing declare that there is an 
army of 32,000 drilled and disciplined Pinkerton 
thugs in this country. They are hidden out of 
sight as much as possible, but they are here. 
It is said that the pay-roll of this private army 
amounts to over a million dollars a month. 

Who pays it ? Why, the plutocrats, who find 
our republic is not quite strong enough to suit 
them. 

The National Guards now number over 100,- 
000 and their muster roll is constantly increas- 
ing. Great care is being taken with their drill- 
ing and equipment, and every regiment goes 
into a camp of instruction for several weeks in 
each year, where they are supervised by regular 
army officers detailed for that purpose. Fur- 
thermore the social atmosphere of these troops 
has become so genteel that the average working- 
man is not at home there. This is intentional 



358 THE COMING CLIMAX 

and done by plan, for Col. Austin of the Thir- 
teenth, Brooklyn, N.Y., regiment, squarely said 
he would not accept a member of any labor or- 
ganization in his command. These guards have 
street-riot drills and Gatling-guns especially 
constructed to mow down mobs. Quiet but 
persistent recruiting is rapidly filling the regular 
army regiments up to their maximum quotas, 
and it is generally understood that a move will 
soon be made to increase the number of regi- 
ments in all arms of the service. In addition to 
this the army of the United States is being 
drawn in from the plain and mountain districts, 
and concentrated at carefully selected strategic 
points in the interior, so that they can be 
massed by thousands at any point desired with- 
in twelve hours. Chicago millionaires contrib- 
uted hundreds of thousands of dollars for the es- 
tablishment of a United States fort within half 
an hour's ride from the heart of the city, and 
cavalry, artillery and infantry are now quartered 
there. Does this merely indicate that our 
Chicago plutocrats paid out this cash so that 
they could delight their eyes with the sight of 
the military evolutions of regular troops ? Chi- 
cago rich men are not in the habit of making 



THE COMING CLIMAX 359 

that sort of investments. Everybody knows 
that this United States fort is a fear and a 
threat, and means that they expect to find use 
for these soldiers in shooting down American 
citizens. 

We invite the attention of our readers to a 
mediaeval fortress, that was built by the money 
of Chicago millionaires on Michigan avenue, in 
the vicinity of the residences of the heaviest 
gilded patricians of that city. The subjoined 
extract is taken from the Chicago "Tribune," 
which is one of the plutocracy's official organs: 

"The plan and arrangement of the armory are 
all that can be desired. Every military function 
has been provided for, and the desire to make 
the building a home for the members of the 
First has been realized. The structure is a per- 
fect embodiment of the spirit of regimental life 
both in peace and war. When fully completed 
and furnished it will have accommodations for 
occupation in a state of siege, and will furnish 
a defense against any mob not provided with 
heavy artillery. The conditions are practically 
identical with those which caused the building 
of mediaeval castles, and thus the design strong- 
ly suggests the fortress. 

"In the plan, a space 164x174 feet is covered. 
To the height of thirty-five feet the exterior walls 
are heavy masses of somber brown stone, unbroken 
by any but a single aperture, the forty-foot door- 



360 THE COMING CLIMAX 

way or regimental sally-port on Michigan boule- 
vard, through which the command may march 
in company front. This opening is barred by a 
heavy oak and steel door, swung like a portcullis 
and lying back of the embrasures in the thick- 
ness of the walls. It is protected by firing slots 
on either side. The lowest window-sill in the 
entire building is thirty-five feet from the ground 
and six feet from the floor within. The win- 
dows themselves are bound by heavy iron grills, 
while beneath each window is a narrow port for 
firing, which is splayed on the outer and inner 
jamb to give greater range, and when not in use 
is closed by an oaken door. The whole exte- 
rior mass is crowned by heavily corbeled cornice, 
forming both breast-works and firing ports, 
through which latter the face of the walls below 
is commanded. Each corner of the building is 
marked by a heavy round turret, from which an 
enfilading fire may be maintained along the face 
of all the outer main walls. The design is to 
the last degree military, and cannot fail to im- 
press the passer-by with the full extent of its 
purpose and the ability to carry it out." 

The "Tribune" cheerfully informs us that the 
conditions which caused the building of the feu- 
dal castles and this American fortress are practi- 
cally identical. We are precisely of the "Trib- 
une's" opinion, but are somewhat surprised 
at its frank statement of truth. The robber 
barons of mediaeval days built castled strong- 



THE COMING CLIMAX S61 

holds for brigand forts, whence they could sally 
forth at the head of their bands of armed thieves 
and plunder the humble producers. Yes, we 
agree that the two cases are very like indeed. 
And yet there are old men now living in Chicago 
who were there when it was a frontier trading- 
post. It had a fort garrisoned by soldiers then, 
but it was to protect the pioneers from the 
fierce red men who ranged the vast wilds that 
stretched away toward the west. The summers 
and winters that have come and gone since those 
days seem few and short to these gray-haired 
survivors, but they have been long enough ap- 
parently to allow our republic to run its course 
from youth to old age; for if indeed the time is 
come that a free democracy is obliged to build 
fortresses in order to protect organized society 
from the savagery of its own citizens, decrepi- 
tude is upon it and death is very near. 

The erection of a National Guard fortress 
within the city, and the establishment of a great 
United States fort on its edge is a square decla- 
ration on the part of the plutocrats that they re- 
gard the majority of workingmen as enemies of 
law and order, and expect a revolutionary out- 
break from them, which only a powerful mili- 



362 THE COMING CLIMAX 

tary force can put down. If the great mass of 
our workingmen be good patriots and safe citi- 
zens, and the only danger to society is from a 
lot of these exceedingly mysterious anarchists, 
why in the name of common sense do not the 
Chicago millionaires, who run the city as they 
see fit, make the authorities raise a corps of 
50,000 brawny workingmen as National Guard 
soldiers, and have them armed, equipped, drilled 
and ready for duty? They could enlist this 
number of men in two days and double it in a 
week. They will not do this, because they dis- 
trust the workingmen, and will not allow them 
to be armed and formed into companies under 
officers of their own election. If there is any 
hole here through which a plutocratic apologist 
can wriggle out we should very much like to 
have it shown. The Chicago millionaires are not 
afraid of foreign anarchists, but they are afraid 
of the possible wrath of outraged native work- 
ingmen. Hence these fortresses, forts, genteel 
National Guards, Gatling-guns, riot drills and 
regular troops. What an unconscious confes- 
sion of their crimes it is for the plutocrats to 
profess a fear that the men whose toil built up 
the city may tear it down. This monstrous 



THE COMING CLIMAX 363 

suggestion on their part is revolting to every- 
thing that is best in human nature, and if our 
good citizens were not malignly entranced by 
their millionaire magicians, they would rise 
up as one man and cry out at the horror of this 
infamous suspicion against our honest and patri- 
otic toilers. 

This is a plutocratic slander, and the "Trib- 
une" has the right of it, for the robber barons 
are here again and at their congenial work of 
trampling down the lowly and pillaging the pro- 
ducers. As it was in the old days, so is it now, 
and they need strong fortresses and ferocious 
men-at-arms for the successful prosecution of 
their brigand trade. And all this time our com- 
fortable middle-class people are not quite certain 
that they like the recent growth of millionaires. 
They are not absolutely sure that it is the best 
possible arrangement for the republic to have 
25,000 English and American capitalists own 
nearly half its wealth, with a prospct of getting 
about all of it in the next twenty years. They 
are not altogether convinced that the nation can 
be best managed by an aristocratic oligarchy. 
But while these doubts vaguely trouble them at 
times, the middle-class people have full confi- 



364 THE COMING CLIMAX 

dence that the plutocrats can overcome the pro- 
ducers if issue is ever joined between them on 
physical lines. Right here is where our con- 
tented fellow-citizens are liable to make their 
supreme mistake, because it is one that may cost 
them their lives. 

If it unfortunately so happens that the evil 
tendencies now existent in the nation continue on 
their present downhill course; if the legislative 
function passes entirely under the control of the 
Triumphant Plutocrats and is openly used by 
them as an engine for the oppression and spolia- 
tion of the masses; if the great plain people come 
to know that just legal tribunals have vanished 
from the land, and that the judge on the bench 
is merely the ermined lackey of the aristocratic 
usurpers who have subverted the republic; if 
the detestable corruption, that now infects our 
political and commercial life, increases until its 
hideous rottenness becomes an unbearable 
stench in the nostrils of honest men ; if at last 
the good citizens of this democracy find them- 
selves at bay, where they are compelled to 
choose between being the slaves of a plutocratic 
despotism and forming a national vigilance com- 
mittee that shall purify the land and bring back 



THE COMING CLIMAX 365 

Washington's republic — when that sad day 
comes, the middle class will promptly find out 
where the balance of power in this country is 
vested. It will be irrefutably proven that the 
working masses are its custodians. The maxi- 
mum of physical force will be on the side of 
man's right, God's justice, human liberty, the 
democratic idea and a government of the people, 
by the people and for the people. There is dan- 
ger in the very thought that the plutocrats can 
overmaster the producers when it comes to a 
trial of strength between them. They could not 
stand before the uprisen masses for a day, for 
they would be swept off the face of the earth. 

The more stubbornly the plutocrats resisted, 
the more complete would be their extermina- 
tion, and their pampered wives and children 
would beg their bread with the lowest grade of 
paupers. Beware of the people's day of wrath, 
for it is a dreadful thing. We know what aw- 
ful deeds the best of men may do under sudden 
rage, and the summed-up indignation of mill- 
ions stands terrible in history, through what it 
wrought in the case of the French revolution. 

It is idle to say that these horrors cannot be 
repeated in this nation, when they are feared to- 



366 THE COMING CLIMAX 

day by the wisest thinkers in the republic. 
They can only be avoided in one way, and that 
is by the doing of even and exact justice to all 
men. An appeal to force would be to invite 
universal destruction, and that appeal is precise- 
ly what our Triumphant Plutocrats are now 
counting on, hence the immeasurable perils 
which threaten our people. Every philanthropic 
patriot knows that a national conflict between 
the plutocrats and producers woud be an awful 
catastrophe to civilization. Let a wave of fire 
and blood roll over the republic, with the people 
standing victorious, when the new world rose out 
of the flood. The plutocrats* would be gone, mo- 
nopolies, trusts, hundred-millionaires, grasping 
corporations, railway land grants, coal barons, 
English landlords, unjust judges, banking Shy- 
locks and political machines would be gone; but 
there would be fifty years of work ahead in the 
reconstruction of society, during which time the 
progress of the nation would be halted and the 
moral and intellectual elevation of our people 
checked. Thus even the triumph of the people 
would be an appalling calamity, although infi- 
nitely preferable to the hopeless hell of pluto- 
cratic despotism which would be sequential to 
the victory of the aristocratic oligarchy. 



THE COMING CLIMAX 367 

If either of these unspeakable curses ravages 
our country it will be through the criminal neg- 
lect of its citizens, and the punishment will be 
a just one, for it is now in our power to avert 
all danger by making such reforms in the indus- 
trial, commercial and governmental polity of 
the republic as will meet the righteous needs of 
the producers, and thus make for us the peace, 
prosperity and happiness that comes to the obe- 
dient children of God. 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE DREAD CLIMAX 

"The sheriff is the mainstay of our government, not the governor. The 
sheriff's posse, not the militia, must enforce our laws if we are to have 
peace and justice under the law. If the sheriff and his posse fail us we 
have nothing left, for that will mean that the people themselves have 
failed. — [St. Louis Republic. 

The foregoing are words of wisdom and suited 
to the present crisis. It would be well for the 
republic if they could be blazoned on the front 
of all our churches, schools and public buildings, 
as a monition of unceasing warning, until these 
days of peril be happily over. This one sen- 
tence from the St. Louis paper embodies the 
essence of the relation of our government to its 
people as a controlling force. Any deviation 
from its teaching, in practice, violates the law 
of the nation's healthful life and puts the repub- 
lic in danger. A true democracy must rest on 
the faith and strength of a majority of its citi- 
zens. In times of supreme emergency the offi- 
cials who control its governmental mechanism 
should turn for aid to the great body of the peo- 
368 



THE COMING CLIMAX 369 

pie as the only source of their power and author- 
ity. Whenever this is not done promptly and 
without reservation, it shows a stupendous con- 
tradiction between the theory and practice of the 
republic which forebodes evil. It is then full 
time that all good patriots began to look closely 
at their country's situation if they would save it 
from calamity. That bad condition is now upon 
us, and our need for help unto salvation is in- 
stant and pressing. The plutocrats despise the 
humdrum legality of the sheriff's posse with its 
democratic simplicity, because it is not a force 
designed to serve the purpose of despots. In 
free America tyrants can only grasp this sword 
by the blade. It has been found that sheriff's 
posses are not over-eager to shoot down their 
friends and neighbors. Hence this primitive 
republican soldiery is out of favor with the plu- 
tocrats, and they seek others less squeamish 
about taking human life. The professional sol- 
dier is a thing of horror. He is the most hide- 
ous human product of the ages. If you find him 
in a nation that claims to be Christian and civil- 
ized, the religion of that country has a devilish 
taint, and its vaunted enlightenment is a bar- 
baric sham. The educated warrior is merely a 

24 



370 THE COMING CLIMAX 

man-killing machine, in whose manufacture the 
bloodthirsty empire of Rome was peculiarly 
expert. Her legionaries made the most famous 
standing army known to history, and later tyran- 
nies have but copied after it, because the Roman 
centurion was particularly well practiced in the 
Satanic necromancy which takes the heart, soul 
and conscience out of a man and disciplines him 
into an insensate weapon of murder for the ty- 
rant's use. 

Only the other day, the imperial egotist who 
sits on the German throne told a regiment of 
soldiers that upon command they must shoot 
down their own brothers without question. This, 
forsooth, was their duty to his majesty the Em- 
peror, which takes the place of all duties to God 
and man. We are now in the early morning- 
time of a new day for humanity, and as its beau- 
tiful dawn light slowly grows over a long dark- 
ened world, the haughty monarch and his bru- 
tal trooper shall slink away and be lost forever 
in the shadows of a night that is gone. 

The divine principle of the brotherhood of 
man is now secretly making way, and under- 
mining the despots' authority all through the 
armies of Europe. Very soon Dynamite the 



THE COMING CLIMAX 371 

democrat may step forth, and then military ab- 
solutism will vex the lives of men no more. 
While the democratization of the European 
peoples is moving resistlessly onward, and will 
ultimately abolish the regular armies by which 
alone are the masses oppressed and autocracies 
upheld, the great republic of America is under- 
going a reaction toward despotism. Our Tri- 
umphant Plutocracy is determined to have a mil- 
itary establishment, to be not only a menace to 
the liberties and prosperity of the great plain 
people, but also treasonable to the spirit of our 
free institutions. To this end the aristocratic 
oligarchy is busily mobilizing the Pinkertons, the 
regular army and the National Guards, with the 
purpose of creating a force of fighters by trade, 
alien to our working citizens and utterly indiffer- 
ent to the most sacred traditions of the republic. 
The plutocrats desire to have a corps of hireling 
soldiers at their command, similar to the "Free 
Companies" who five hundred years ago ranged 
Southern Europe and sold their swords to the 
highest bidder. Our aristocratic oligarchy 
would have men-at-arms with whom patriotism, 
liberty and mercy are meaningless terms, for 
such soldiers could be relied upon to corn- 



372 THE COMING CLIMAX 

mit murder swiftly and without remorse. 

And now it has come to pass in the 116th 
year of American independence, that certain 
strange and ominous groupings appear on the 
fateful chess-board where the destiny of Wash- 
ington's republic is to be wrought out. The 
game is most oddly arranged for a free and equal 
democratic commonwealth, because the kings 
and queens, the bishops, castles and the knights 
are bunched on one side, while all the common- 
place little pawns occupy the other, and the 
stern play for victory is about to begin between 
them. The kings and queens and the bishops 
and the castles and the knights stand for the 
money power and the trusts and the plutocratic 
press and the plutocratic military and the pluto- 
cratic lawyers and clergy. The humble little 
pawns stand for the plain working people, whose 
toil has given power and gorgeousness to the foe 
which would now crush them. 

The plutocrats and producers are fronting 
each other in order of battle, with the issue be- 
tween them positive and sharply drawn, while 
the great middle class stands neutral with un- 
determined dynamical possibilities which only 
the actual conflict can bring forth. Both of the 



THE COMING CLIMAX 373 

opposing forces are in a state of tremendous 
activity. There is tireless movement everywhere 
within them; organization and preparation, 
conscious and planned, go on ceaselessly. In 
addition to this open and visible marshaling of 
the hosts, there is an undemonstrative and almost 
unconscious preparation for great events taking 
place in the minds and hearts of millions. They 
are thinking new thoughts. A strange mental 
fermentation has come to them, traditional be- 
liefs are being sternly questioned, and a con- 
science that has long been quiescent and at ease 
rises to action. There is prophetic expectancy 
of a solemn crisis in the souls of men. 

A combustible quality is in the moral atmos- 
phere, and storm signals are everywhere flying 
for him who can truly see. This universal mo- 
tion is not casual and meaningless, but is dom- 
inated by a common tendency even though its 
direction be not fully revealed to us. That kin- 
dred forces are rapidly aggregating themselves 
into unity is most obvious; streams that once 
flowed parallel are now converging, and will 
soon give volume to one mighty river. 

Multitudinous signs and portents are abroad 
in the land which tell the wise man that the hour 



374 THE COMING CLIMAX 

of a supreme climax for the republic is near at 
hand. How will it ccme? It will come along 
the lines of least resistance. It will come by the 
roads of habit and custom, which have been 
beaten hard and smooth by the footfalls of 
eight generations of free Americans. It will come 
because our people love justice and liberty and 
believe in human rights and human progress. 
It will come for the reason that the highest loy- 
alty of the enlightened is due to God's law and 
not man's. It will come along the grand high- 
way over which the ever-advancing democratic 
idea is marching to an enduring triumph. It will 
come because the Almighty has decreed the birth 
of a diviner cycle for universal humanity, and 
America is its predestined Bethlehem. It will 
come in peace if selfish and cruel villains keep 
their wicked hands off and do not strive by vain 
opposition to check the inevitable realization of 
the long-foretold era of "peace on earth and 
good will toward men;" but this sublime finality 
will be wrought out in war if the aristocratic 
oligarchy antagonizes the peaceful quest of the 
great plain people after a larger, truer and sweet- 
er life for all, and strives to baffle it by trick, 
fraud and force. If bribed judges and bought 



THE COMING CLIMAX 375 

legislatures defeat the will of the citizens by 
craft and artifice, and balk them from getting 
righteous and reasonable reforms through polit- 
ical methods, days of dire trouble will surely 
come to this republic. The people will not be 
denied plain justice by legal quibbles, but will 
reach out and take the right that belongs to 
them, no matter what bogus authority bars the 
way. Our country is exceedingly liable to pass- 
ing popular ebullitions that soon die out and do 
no particular harm. If when these occur on the 
part of the producers, the watchful plutocrats 
cry out rebels, traitors, anarchists, and demand 
that troops and the hangman put them down 
with bloody severity, then will rise this counter- 
cry from the great plain people, "You the rebels, 
you the traitors, you the anarchists, and we the 
patriots, the lovers of liberty and the believers 
in the reign of law founded on justice; and we 
shall save Washington's republic by driving 
your plutocratic usurpation out of it." This is 
the dread aspect of the coming climax, from the 
presentation that is nearest to us and most prob- 
able to occur. If the peril of it is to be averted, 
the great middle class must rise out of its bed 
of contentment and take instant action. In or- 



376 THE COMING CLIMAX 

der to avoid a possible danger it is requisite to 
know what it is, where it is and how and when 
it may come. 

The plutocrats, being now altogether triumph- 
ant in the land, are satisfied with conditions as 
they exist, and will neither disturb the status 
quo themselves, nor allow any one else to do so 
if they can help it. If hostile legislation ever 
seriously menaces their franchises, either in the 
case of individual states or nation at large, if ex- 
ecutive vetoes fail them, and the judges are too 
much in fear of popular resentment to dare pro- 
nounce righteous laws unconstitutional, — when 
that time comes the American people may pre- 
pare themselves for trouble on a large scale, for 
they shall surely have it. 

Our aristocratic oligarchy is precisely like all 
others, because the patrician caste has the same 
general characteristics in all nations. It is his- 
torically established that aristocracies never sur- 
render, but fight to the death for their special 
privileges. They have always done so and 
always will, and our great plain people might 
just as well recognize this fact first as last. Let 
the time be near at hand when a peaceful and 
equitable adjustment of the present unfair 



THE COMING CLIMAX 377 

economic system seems about to come to pass 
through legislation. Let a popular tidal wave roll 
over the country. Let the November national 
election return a People's Party President. Let 
the lower house of Congress show a commanding 
majority of People's Party members. Let the 
platform of the political victors speak so sharply 
and clearly for sweeping reforms in finance, 
land and transportation, that its demand must 
perforce be wrought into the law of the land. 
Let the plutocrats know of a surety that the 
day of their unholy franchises and brigand char- 
ters will be over forever in case the peace of the 
nation remains undisturbed. Then look out for 
a storm. Our plutocracy constitutes the richest 
and most powerful aristocracy that ever held rule 
in any nation on the face of the globe. That of 
Carthage was nearest to it in wealth and unques- 
tioned supremacy, but the aristocracy of that 
commercial republic was poor and of small 
authority, when compared with our American 
product. Please scan an itemized list of some of 
the losses which the plutocracy might sustain by 
reason of a sweeping People's Party victory. 

Suppose we were given a radical reform in 
our financial system, with loans direct to the 



378 THE COMING CLIMAX 

people from government banks that received de- 
posits and guaranteed the security of the same. 
This would annihilate our present gang of Shy- 
lock bankers, loan sharks and mortgage men. 
There would be no locking up of money through 
conspiracies between treasury officials, big 
bankers and great speculators who are thereby 
enabled to hammer down prices and buy in 
when the bottom is reached. The power of 
money to oppress would be gone, along with its 
usurious profit. Suppose the railways and tele- 
graphs passed under government ownership, no 
more watering stock, no more fifty per cent an- 
nual dividends on actual investment, no more 
charging the public five times what the service 
was worth, no more land grants, no more crowd- 
ing down the wages of employees and pocketing 
the saving, no more bankrupting railroads and 
buying them in again, no more stock exchanges 
with mad mobs of howling speculators, making 
haste to get rich by gambling, no more Jay 
Goulds, Cal Brices, Vanderbilts, Huntingtons 
and Stanfords. Suppose the farmers were given 
a governmental warehouse system which kept all 
the legitimate profit of their toil in their own 
pockets, and thus made the board-of-trade oper- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 379 

ator's occupation to vanish. Suppose the enor- 
mous vacant land-holdings, of English and 
American lords and home and foreign syndicates, 
were so sharply taxed that the greedy drones 
would be glad to sell at any price. Suppose the 
acreage under which God stored up coal and oil 
for the common benefit of all his future children 
some millions of years ago were taken by right 
of eminent domain, and their treasures brought 
forth for the impartial blessing of all the people. 
Suppose all these hypothetical cases to have 
become realities, and then suppose if you can — 
that is, if your imagination is able to bear the 
strain required — suppose all these high and ar- 
rogant plutocrats descending meekly from their 
lofty estate, turning over all their special privi- 
leges, pillaging franchises and chartered sources 
of iniquitous wealth, and saying, "We acquiesce 
humbly in the will of the American people; our 
good brothers from the farm, workshop, rail- 
way and mine have squarely outvoted us, and 
being good citizens of the republic we submis- 
sively step down and let them have their way 
in running the government. " 

When Alexander of Russia and William of 
Germany voluntarily turn their empires into 



380 THE COMING CLIMAX 

democracies and quit the despot business to be- 
come practical farmers, we may expect to see 
our plutocrats surrender without striking a blow 
because they are beaten at the polls by a major- 
ity composed of hayseed farmers and sooty 
workingmen. The American plutocrats care 
nothing for either the democratic idea or repub- 
lican institutions. They want a government 
that will protect their special privileges, and so 
long as it does that they are indifferent to every- 
thing else. Persia, Switzerland or the Sand- 
wich Islands are all one to them. So long as the 
plutocrats hold undisputed sway in the United 
States, with the political machines, legislatures, 
the national Congress, judges, governors and 
President acting merely as their facile puppets, 
they are entirely satisfied, because the game by 
which they are getting monstrously rich will go 
right along with no one to make them afraid. 
But suppose on the morning after a Novem- 
ber presidential election the plutocratic daily 
papers come to twenty-five thousand plutocratic 
breakfast-tables, and the lords of the various 
palaces complacently turn to them, in order 
to see which of their two lackeys had won 
the presidential seat. It would be a matter of 



THE COMING CLIMAX 381 

utter indifference whether it was the democratic 
or republican flunkey, because the plutocracy 
would be solid in either event. In the first place 
they might be struck with the absence of the 
familiar rooster pictured in the act of trying to 
crow his head off. Then they would go along 
down the column searching for the name of 
Cleveland or Blaine, Harrison or Carlisle, Mills 
or McKinley, Breckenridge or Alger, Sherman 
or Watterson, Cullom or Brice, Allison or Hill, 
and lo, they would find not one of them, while 
instead they might see the name of Streeter or 
Weaver or Polk or Norton or Powderly or Bur- 
rows or Peffer or Donnelly or Macune orTaube- 
neck or Otis or Davis or some other leader of 
the people. Then in accordance with a precon- 
ceived plan, in case of a plutocratic defeat, 
would come the scare headlines, as a first move in 
the plutocratic conspiracy to openly subvert the 
republic: 

A FRAUDULENT ELECTION. 

THE PEOPLE'S PARTY WINS ON THE FACE OF THE 

RETURNS, BY THE MOST INFAMOUS FRAUDS 

EVER KNOWN IN THE POLITICAL 

RISTORY OF THE COUNTRY, 



382 THE COMING CLIMAX 

INTIMIDATION AT THE POLLS PRACTICED ON A 
SCALE OF UNHEARD-OF MAGNITUDE. 

HEAVILY ARMED FARMERS AND WORKINGMEN SUR- 
ROUND THE VOTING PLACES IN THIRTY 
STATES, AND DRIVE ALL DEMOCRATS AND 
REPUBLICANS AWAY FROM THE POLLS. 

HUNDREDS OF AMERICAN CITIZENS SHOT DOWN IN 

COLD BLOOD WHILE IN THE EXERCISE OF 

THE RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE. 

COMMENCEMENT OF THE SOCIALISTIC CAMPAIGN 

WHICH IS TO GIVE THE COUNTRY OVER 

TO REVOLUTION AND ANARCHY, 

FIRE AND BLOOD. 

Four months more of unquestioned dominion 
remain to the plutocracy. The President is 
theirs, the Congress is theirs, the regular army is 
theirs, the Pinkertons and the National Guards 
are all theirs. 

The plutocratic press becomes lurid with the 
recital of the horrors that have been done by 
and are to come in with the People's Party. 
The plutocratic clergy thunder anathemas at the 
mdsses from fifty thousand pulpits. Public meet- 
ings are held in ten thousand towns and cities 



THE COMING CLIMAX 383 

under the immediate direction of the attorney, 
editorial and Shylock cappers, heelers and 
bunko steerers for the plutocracy. Resolutions 
are passed declaring that the election of the 
People's Party President and congressmen was 
accomplished by fraud and force, and that it 
would be a crime to allow them to take their 
seats; and, furthermore, that the application of 
the People's Party principles to the government 
of the country would overturn law and order, 
destroy Christian civilization, make the earth 
turn the other way on its axis and cause an 
eclipse of the sun that would last six months. 
All of this nonsense would probably be religiously 
believed by the middle class, which, under the 
influence of unreasoning fear, gives implicit cre- 
dence to the most absurd hobgoblin stories. It 
is a known fact that if a man should jump up 
in the middle of a crowded church, theater or 
concert hall and shout, "The house is on fire! 
Flee for your lives !" the great majority of the 
audience would not even give one look in order 
to see for themselves whether or no there was 
indeed a fire, but would blindly rush for the 
doors and proceed to trample one another to 
death in the frantic struggle to get out. 



984 THE COMING CLIMAX 

The plutocrats know by experiment how easily 
our middle class can have their good sense and 
reasoning faculties utterly stampeded by terror. 
This was proven to a demonstration by the 
Chicago Anarchy episode. The monopolist saw 
in that untoward event an opportunity to deal 
organized labor a crushing blow. The eight- 
hour day was almost gained, and capitalism 
knew that this victory for the workingmen 
would be but the first of a series of triumphant 
battles that might ultimate in the industrial 
emancipation of the toiler. The near fruition 
of the laborers' weary hope was blasted by the 
Haymarket bomb. The plutocrats marked the 
chance and swiftly seized it. For weeks and 
months the monopoly press of the country kept 
up one long screech of horror. The comforta- 
bly-circumstanced middle-class people of all sec- 
tions were simply convulsed with terror. Their 
craze of fear made them incapable of weighing 
evidence or giving anything like a just estima- 
tion of the actual situation. Their trembling 
souls were dominated by one awful thought: 
"The anarchists are here; law, order, govern- 
ment and Christian civilization are liable to be 
swept from the land by a wave of fire and blood. 



THE COMING CLIMAX 385 

Save us at any price! Give us a despotism if 
you can do no better, but save us, whatever 
you do." 

If in the spring of 1886 a bold and ambitious 
military man had been in the Presidential chair, 
instead of Grover Cleveland, he could have made 
himself dictator of the nation and afterward 
emperor without the slightest opposition on the 
part of the middle class. For months after the 
Hay market affair a Russian "white terror" was 
in possession of a great metropolis of the Amer- 
ican republic. The police of Chicago became 
as supreme and irresponsible as those of St. 
Petersburg. The prisons were choked with 
suspects arrested without warrant, and the vic- 
tim who asked for a trial asked in vain. The 
homes of the poor were invaded by squads of 
lawless detectives, and the constitutional right 
of the American citizen to keep and bear arms 
was arbitrarily taken away. The ordinary force 
of spies, informers, shadowers and detectives was 
increased to an enormous extent, and the bank- 
ers and millionaires raised a large fund for the 
employment of a special corps of sleuths, spot- 
ters and doggers to keep ceaseless watch on 
every man known to be a reformer. It was a 



386 THE COMING CLIMAX 

rich harvest time for the criminal and dissolute 
scoundrels composing the only class that will 
hire out as spies. These despicable wretches 
must earn their money, so they turned in lying 
reports that were greedily believed by their mas- 
ters. The tyrant Czar's terrible third section 
held saturnalia on American soil, and Liberty 
shuddered. Peaceful meetings of workingmen 
were broken up by the policemen's club and 
whosoever dared to protest was brutally beaten 
and dragged off to a cell. Free speech was 
throttled and freedom under the law ceased to be 
a living fact. A whimsical incident, that oc- 
curred during those black days, throws a flood of 
revealing light on the despotic condition that 
obtained in Chicago at that time. A prominent 
Minnesota lawyer was going into the Union 
Depot, when two policemen seized him and 
flung him to the bottom of a flight of steps. 
Upon his protesting at their astounding action, 
he was informed that anarchists were not toler- 
ated in that locality. The victim pulled out a 
pocketful of passes and proved that he was a 
railroad lawyer in good and regular standing, up- 
on which the police were placated, and kindly 
advised him to take off the red necktie which 



THE COMING CLIMAX 387 

had been the means of bringing him to grief. 
For several days after the verdict of guilty 
had been rendered against the anarchists, the 
papers were filled with arguments in favor of 
raising a testimonial fund for the jury that de- 
creed their death. It was seriously proposed to 
give them $25,000 apiece, but the shrewd at- 
torneys of the plutocracy advised against it, for 
fear of the reaction when the frightened citizens 
regained their sober senses. It is true they had 
a good plutocratic precedent for giving such re- 
ward, in the case of his most Christian Majesty 
Louis XV, who loaded the judges and execu- 
tioners of Damiens with rich gifts. Damiens 
had threatened the foul life of the imperial de- 
bauchee, and Damiens, in the presence of the 
high-born ladies and gentlemen of France, first 
had his right hand slowly burned off, then his 
flesh was cut open and melted lead and pitch 
poured in the gaping wounds, and at last, after 
hours of hellish torture, he was torn asunder by 
four strong horses. This was a hint to the low- 
born fellows that they must keep hands off from 
the anointed ones of earth, and yet how miser- 
ably the example failed. The head of the very 
next French king fell under the revolutionary 



388 THE COMING CLIMAX 

knife, and many a young lord and lady, who 
gloated over the agony of Damiens that day, in 
later years themselves mounted the scaffold, and 
the last sight they saw was thousands of low- 
born vulgar faces demoniacally transfigured by 
the joy of a glutted hate, and the last sounds they 
heard were savage screams of delight at their 
misery. And thus the whirligig of time brings 
round its revenges, and thus the seed planted in 
blood bringeth forth fruit after its kind. 

Thousands of thoughtful Americans who were 
in Chicago during the anarchist craze received a 
moral shock from which they can never recover 
until this republic is planted anew on the old 
foundations of democratic liberty. That masque 
of despotism had its dread hour, and the hideous 
nightmare vanished, but ere it departed the 
most precious faith of many a patriotic soul had 
withered under its blighting shadow. Men who 
had sealed an inherited love for the republic in 
many a battle, and by the side of many a com- 
rade's grave, felt the first doubt come to their ex- 
ultant belief in the all-sufficiency of their country 
for every trial, and with the new questioning 
came a bitterness that passed the bitterness of 
death. They saw the sacred elemental princi- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 389 

pies, which must underlie a government that is 
truly of the people, by the people and for the 
people, ignored, profaned and shamelessly vio- 
lated under the influence of a blind and unrea- 
soning terror that was sedulously propagated by 
the designing plutocracy, which had much to 
gain through it. 

If Chicago had been in imminent peril the 
city should have been placed under martial law, 
which is in full accord with our republican theory 
of government in times of grave emergency. 
This was not done, and yet while all the civil 
functions of our democratic order of society were 
supposed to be in full force, the arbitrary meth- 
ods of the Russian police were used with brutal 
lawlessness. The democratic idea in human gov- 
ernment was mocked at and spit upon, and the 
omnipotent middle class not only tolerated the 
outrage but approved it, so that it stands to-day 
as an unquestioned precedent; and when the 
next "wild scare" comes along, either through 
accident or by the careful planning of the plutoc- 
racy, the middle class will without a murmur see 
a city, or a state, or the whole country, pass in- 
to the hands of a despotism as savage as that of 
Persia. Let them be once assured that they are 



390 THE COMING CLIMAX 

not going to be hurt by it, and that their pre- 
cious property and sources of income will be 
doubly secure by a plutocratic "white terror" 
with its summary arrests and dragonnades, and 
they will acquiesce in the destruction of every 
sacred tradition of the republic. This they will 
do if their action during the Chicago anarchy 
craze has any value as indicating their future 
course under similar circumstances. That na- 
tional tragedy gave the republic the most shat- 
tering blow that it ever received. The shock of 
the civil war bore no comparison to it, because 
the two events belong to different orders of po- 
litical phenomena. The conflict between the 
North and South held no threat against the 
democratic idea, for the only issue in that con- 
test was the long debated one of the relation of 
the several states to the general government. 
We do not mean to say that the actual impact 
of this anarchy hammer did the damage to our 
free institutions. No, it was the terrible reve- 
lation that came through it, just as a miner by 
one stroke of his pick may disclose a vast cavern 
of unknown depth lying beneath. By means of 
the event it became plain that our middle class 
hold peace and property as things so dear, that 



THE COMING CLIMAX 391 

every free institution and cherished memory of 
the republic become valueless beside them. It 
needs not that their material riches be positively 
in danger. Ah, no! for a universal thirst for 
wealth has for so long devoured our successful 
people, that even a remote hint of possible 
danger to the business mechanism which returns 
them incomes and gives value to their property, 
is enough to make them consent to the destruc- 
tion of free government. This assertion is am- 
ply warranted by impregnable facts. Neither a 
few hundred nor yet a few tens of thousands of 
anarchists could seriously injure the republic, so 
long as they were held down by the superincum- 
bent pressure of millions of peaceful and con- 
tented workingmen. Ah, right there is the rub. 
Our aristocracy knows full well that this mighty 
army of satisfied producers no longer exists in 
the American republic; on the contrary we have 
millions of dissatisfied and disaffected toilers, 
whose complaints and requests must be disposed 
of in some way, because they are an element of 
danger in the land. If we wait what seems to 
be a favorable strategic chance, and then strive 
under plutocratic direction to settle the vexing 
problem with the sword, our republic will furnish 



392 THE COMING CLIMAX 

future ages with a monumental example of na- 
tional suicide by hara-kari ; for if military power 
be called into the present economic discussion 
between capital and labor, this continent will be 
drenched in blood from sea to sea, and it might 
perchance take a corps of surveyors a week to 
locate the site of the Chicago City Hall. Let 
the fat-jowled plutocrat, with his serpent brain 
and alligator heart, scout this prediction as he 
may, but we dare the spiritual-minded man to 
do so, who still remembers that we had a great 
war a few years ago, of two thousand battles 
and 540,000 dead men. 

The nineteenth century's last decade seems 
predestined to be the most fateful in our coun- 
try's history. Terrible antagonistic forces, that 
daily gather in strength and volume, are converg- 
ing on it as on a storm-center. These threaten- 
ing elements can be rendered harmless, but only 
by the exercise of a far larger measure of pa- 
tience, wisdom and justice than has ever been 
practiced by our people. We have in front of 
us the sublimest task that ever implored a na- 
tion, and it is nothing less than the finding and 
occupying of a new moral world, precisely as 
Columbus found a new physical world four 



THE COMING CLIMAX H9tf 

hundred years ago. This alone will save us in the 
coming climacteric years. 

Twenty million miserable victims of a cruel 
and greedy despotism are on the verge of star- 
vation in Russia to-day, and doubtless before 
the spring flowers bloom along the Volga, mill- 
ions of these robbed and outraged creatures will 
have died of hunger. This unspeakable tragedy 
will have a world-wide influence, and must pow- 
erfully affect the destiny of the human race. The 
peoples of all civilized nations will question their 
governments as never before. They will ask, 
"What are you here for? Have you any good 
and worthy mission for the toilers of earth? 
Are the masses to be forever the mere drudging 
conveniences of the classes? Must we eternally 
work while you play? Must we hunger while you 
surfeit? Must we shiver while you swelter? Not 
so; the natural rights of man declare against the 
injustice; so give us our own, lest we take it 
with a hard hand." 

Europe will feel this quickening of the popular 
sense of justice to a greater degree than America, 
because its needs are greater, but the senti- 
ment will be electrically transferred across the 
ocean, and our own producing masses will be 



394 THE COMING CLIMAX 

swift in response to it. It will make the ills 
they now complain of the more irksome, and 
will steadily reduce the standard of wrongs to 
be patiently borne. Please remember that mill- 
ions of producers now regard the Triumphant 
Plutocracy as a usurpation in Washington's 
republic. This is a solemn fact, and will have 
a momentous bearing on coming events. If to 
arrogant callousness in the face of popular suffer- 
ing, our aristocracy adds wanton brutality to- 
ward it, the people's day of wrath will be very 
near. A year of exceptional political tumult is 
manifestly ahead of us, and it will be insanity to 
go blindly into it without an intense effort to 
calculate the possible perils we may meet and 
then take measures to avoid them. We have 
abundant data at hand for the purpose, if we 
will only wisely use them. 

1837, 1857 and 1873 were years of awful 
commercial disaster. Business lay prostrate; the 
burden of misery was everywhere; but it bore 
down heaviest, as it always does, on those who 
had only their toil to sell. To these came a 
grim want that pinched their very bones; yet 
the people endured the agony with patience, be- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 395 

cause of a general opinion that these seasons of 
bankruptcy and trade stagnation were inevit- 
able. They regarded them as providential 
dispensations like cyclones or floods, for 
which man was not responsible. To them it 
seemed that an inexorable fate had decreed that 
bad times must follow good in regular perio- 
dicity, so they took the bitter with the sweet in 
fatalistic resignation. 

In 1 89 1 all these silly illusions as to the gen- 
esis of bad years are gone. It is known that 
financial panics belong to a cause-and-effect 
realm, where they can be accounted for with 
mathematical certainty. We narrowly escaped 
a universal business crash in 1890. When the 
next one comes the suffering producers will rise 
in hot indignation, and say: "You corporation 
lords, you trust barons, you banker kings, you 
millionaire dukes, you land princes, you specu- 
lative knights of stocks, bonds, loans and Shy- 
lock interest, your heartless greed is responsible 
for our miseries. Make us answer and reparation, 
and be quick about it." In the three historic 
panic years mentioned the relations between 
capital and labor were of the most amicable 
character when compared with the present aw- 



396 THE COMING CLIMAX 

ful friction that subsists between them. They 
lived and wrought in almost ideal harmony and 
good will, and Macaulay's lines with a little 
change might have been applied to our employ- 
ers and their men: 

" Then none were for a party, 

But all were for the state; 
The rich man helped the poor man, 

The poor man loved the great; 
Then spoils were fairly portioned, 

And the lands were fairly sold — 
For the Romans were like brothers 

In the brave days of old." 

It is out of the power of human language to 
exaggerate the probable calamities that will be- 
fall our country during its next financial panic. 
In the first place the business mechanism of the 
entire nation has become so complex and intri- 
cate, that the slipping of one essential cog will 
bring the whole to a stand- still with a dreadful 
shock. Industrial changes, new inventions and 
the vast development of manufacturing and 
corporate enterprises during recent years have 
packed the workingmen into the great centers 
of population. The small shop and independent 
artisan are gone, and we have millions of toilers 
who work for a weekly wage. This body of 



THE COMING CLIMAX 397 

producers as a whole hate the capitalistic system 
and the men who stand for it, as it is now run, 
and they firmly believe that the executive, legisla- 
tive and judicial systems of municipalities, states 
and the general government are now being de- 
liberately used for the spoliation and oppression 
of the masses in the interest of the classes. 
Under these conditions let a greater and more 
malign "black Friday" descend upon the na- 
tion and what happens? Productive industry 
ceases, workers who suffered and toiled, because 
of a safe though slender wage, lose their places 
and now have nothing else to lose but their lives. 
There is no money ahead, and the gaunt wolf of 
poverty pokes his sharp nose into their doors. 
Tens of thousands of toilers wander aimlessly 
on the streets with a bitter sense of wrong rag- 
ing in their hearts. An ignorant policeman, 
obtuse to the explosive omens, makes brutal ex- 
ercise of his authority, and in a moment he has 
become merely a bloody blotch on the side- 
walk. The volcano bursts forth. The tiger of 
the proletariat breaks his chains, and the Peo- 
ple's Day of Wrath is here. The plutocrats 
with haughty confidence inform the middle class 
that they will take up the task of putting down 



398 THE COMING CLIMAX 

the servile rebellion, because they have been long 
prepared for the emergency and can do so with 
promptness and dispatch. And thus the aris- 
tocrats will address the bourgeoisie: "While we 
are suppressing this insurrection of the lower 
orders, you must keep perfectly quiet. If we 
seem to be unnecessarily severe in our measures, 
it is for your good as well as our own. We 
have now an opportunity to give the working- 
men a lesson that will keep them down for fifty 
years. If it so happens that starvation comes 
to them, we will see to it that in the future they 
starve quietly and without making any noise 
over it. Great firmness will be required of us 
in the crisis, and we may perchance shed more 
blood than some tender-hearted persons may 
think is necessary, but the Emperor of Russia 
has found out that there is nothing like being 
thorough when it is a case of subduing a disobe- 
dient populace, and we shall follow his enlight- 
ened example. As is well known, this whole 
trouble has come about by reason of the incen- 
diary teachings of these pestilential labor agita- 
tors, sentimental reformers, and would-be 
world-betterers ; therefore, just so soon as we 
have got this outbreak under our heels, we shall 



THE COMING CLIMAX 399 

make a clean sweep of the whole lot, from Ed- 
ward Bellamy to Herr Most, and those that are 
lucky enough to escape the scaffold will have 
a chance to address their arguments to stone 
walls and iron bars during the remainder of 
their lives. When this is happily done, then 
sweet peace shall come to the land and there 
will be none to make the better classes afraid, 
while they enjoy their prosperity. Millions on 
millions of the lower orders will go forth each 
morning and do their tasks in the field, the 
shop and the mine, and each night they will 
return and lay the fruits of their toil at our feet. 
We will take therefrom what will be a reasona- 
ble subsistence for their station in life and gen- 
erously give it unto them, and our industrial or- 
der, under this wholesome discipline, will be as 
peaceful and contented as was that of the South- 
ern States before the war." 

When the plutocrats shall have sent forth this 
sort of a pronunciamento to make the middle 
class tolerant of the subsequent butcheries, the 
Pinkertons, the regular army, the National 
Guards, the artillery and the Gatling-guns, will 
be marshaled for the wholesale massacre of the 
people, Then might there come to pass one of 



400 THE COMING CLIMAX 

those amazing transformation scenes that are the 
unceasing marvel and delight of the historical 
student. The Netherlands gave one when William 
the Silent turned his back on the court of Philip 
of Spain, and became the general of the Dutch 
rebels. England contributed hers in the sentence 
of Charles the First to the scaffold; America 
hers in the Declaration of Independence, and 
last, and most dazzling of all, was that which 
France gave at the fall of her Bastile. All these 
were visions of whole peoples, rising as one 
man and making manifest their eternal unity, 
but they were likewise many things more than 
these. They were supreme demonstrations of 
God's evolutionary force, that eternally toils 
away at the uplifting of humanity. They were 
decisive proofs that man's true life is more of 
the spirit than of the flesh. They were inexor- 
able declarations that growing peoples will 
change their garments, even if they have to tear 
the old uncomfortable clothing into rags and 
stand naked before the world while so doing. 
These thrilling tableaux, that shine out so clear 
from the night of time, mark the grand camping- 
grounds, where the democratic idea mustered 
its squadrons for new marches, larger battles 



THE COMING CLIMAX 401 

and more splendid triumphs. Sinister conditions, 
that hold auguries of evil promise for the repub- 
lic, do now prophesy that very soon the American 
plutocracy, in its course of lawless conquest, 
shall find the American producers massed and 
barring the way against its farther advance. 

The haughty plutocracy sends word to its 
hireling generals: "Ho, there! Bring up your 
cannon and Gatling-guns and blow us a path 
through yonder tumultuous canaille." Then 
would come a transformation scene not witnessed 
on this soil since the embattled farmers of New 
England rallied on Bunker Hill. 

The great middle class, shocked from its 

long trance and rising up to save republican 

institutions, the orderly progress of society and 

Christian civilization, would cry with a loud 

voice: "By the unconquerable might of our 

indignant millions, by our strong souls that love 

liberty and justice, by our faith that looks up 

to God when the dark hour comes, we declare 

the peace of Jesus Christ in this threatened land. 

Ho, ye plutocrats, at last we know you for what 

ye are, atheists, anarchists, destroyers of the 

good and true. With shame we acknowledge 

our long toleration of the reign of crime which 
26 



402 THE COMING CLIMAX 

you brought into the republic. And now avaunt, 
and away with your despots' paraphernalia of 
artillery and armed hirelings! Get ye gone, ye 
men of cruelty and blood, lest our righteous 
wrath descend upon and consume you." 

We firmly believe the plutocratic usurpation 
now in command of the American republic to 
be hopelessly undermined and doomed to swift 
overthrow. The only forces that can be counted 
as loyal to it without reservation, and even to 
the extent of erecting its power into an absolute 
despotism, are the railway attorneys, machine 
politicians, the military hirelings and the criminal 
classes. The structure which the plutocrats have 
so carefully reared is an imposing sham; its 
strength is mere seeming. All unseen the toredo 
navalis of the democratic idea has bored the 
cohesiveness out of all its bulky timbers, so that 
one powerful blow will lay their frowning citadel 
in ruins. The great corporations, trusts and 
millionaires fancy that they have made their 
managers and high-priced clerks willingly par- 
ticeps criminis in their rascalities by giving 
them fat salaries. Thoughtful Americans, re- 
ceiving $5,000 a year from chartered despoilers, 



THE COMING CLIMAX 403 

who themselves realize millions annually, are not 
satisfied. They are forced to live up to their 
incomes under the present artificial and showy 
order of society. What is to become of their 
children after they are dead, when left at the 
mercy of social tendencies under which the few 
become rich and the many poor? These dread 
fears wax more burdensome, as you descend 
among poorer paid clerical employees. 

This affirmation applies with equal directness 
to a multitude of small shopkeepers, business 
men and manufacturers. They are now domi- 
nated by the trusts, corporations and banks, and 
while knowing that their prosperity is more and 
more endangered every day, they will do noth- 
ing to help themselves, when by so doing they 
might bring on instant ruin. But let a shatter- 
ing blow come to the entire business mechanism 
of the nation. Let trade fall dead through a finan- 
cial panic, or a strike that stops every railway 
wheel and steam-engine in the country. Let 
hundreds of thousands of workingmen wander 
idle on the streets of all our great cities, with a 
ruthless military power confronting them. Then 
these millions of clerks, managers and small 
business men will know that the day of doom 



404 THE COMING CLIMAX 

has come and that they must rise up and save 
their country while saving themselves. Gone 
will be their fear of the plutocracy, and gone 
their humble subserviency to the aristocratic 
oligarchy, for they will have nothing more to 
gain by it, but all to lose through it. Then will 
a great cry go abroad throughout the land and 
among all the good people thereof: "Long have 
we been blind but now at last do we see. The 
despoiler has been near us while we slept; liberty 
and motherland are in danger; let us go forth 
and save Washington's republic while yet there 
is time." Before this mighty uprising of the 
great plain people the plutocratic anarchists 
would pale and cower and flee away into the de- 
mon realm whence they came. 

But suppose we be over-sanguine in our pre- 
diction as to the patriotic heroism of the mid- 
dle class, when the fateful hour strikes that is to 
determine the weal or the woe of the republic 
for many a hundred years to come. Suppose 
that on that day of awful destiny, the middle 
class prove recreant through selfish cowardice. 
Suppose they say, "We will continue silent and 
remain safely within our doors, for great is the 
plutocracy with its heavy hand, and it shall 



THE COMING CLIMAX 405 

smite the producing masses into the dust, and 
we will come forth only when peace be with us 
again, and will not go near the streets where 
death gathers the slain workingmen into ghastly 
windrows, until the kindly rain of heaven has 
washed away the bloody record. Nor will we 
venture nigh the prisons packed with bold men 
who dared all and lost all, and now await the 
pleasure of the plutocratic doomsman." 

O timorous middle-class man, delude not your- 
self that this is to be the ending when comes the 
people's day of wrath. Take down your Carlyle, 
your Guizot, your Alison, your Thiers, and note 
where the victory rested when the toilers of 
Paris rose up against the Bastille and aristocratic 
privilege, and then remember that the working 
order in all our cities is as bitterly hostile to 
existing conditions as was that in France at the 
time of the great revolution. This is the stern 
fact that you should hold constantly in mind, 
because it is the volcano's crater out of which 
the revolutionary lava may pour in a devastating 
flood. And remember also that there would be 
no profound peril in this universal dissaffec- 
tion of the toilers toward an order of society 
dominated by a cruel capitalism, but for the 



406 THE COMING CLIMJX 

imperious military threat which is now constant- 
ly flung in their faces. The popular explosive 
elements will be harmless until fired by a Gatling- 
gun and musketry fusillade. Then beware, for 
when this event comes, chaos and old night will 
be very near to our country. 

If our pompous military establishment were 
non-existent, the republic would be in no danger 
whatever; the worst possible financial panic 
would not imperil the peace of our cities in the 
slightest degree. Law and order would be safe 
in the hands of our working masses, because 
they would know that in the face of the greatest 
calamity, the good-hearted American people 
would do their uttermost to relieve their suffer- 
ing and at the same time pass such reformatory 
laws as would make their future lot safer and 
happier. 

The Triumphant Plutocracy, made arrogant 
by the possession of a devoted soldiery, is con- 
fident of its power to put down a general upris- 
ing by means of bloody slaughter, even though 
the said outbreak were deliberately brought 
about by its own brutal oppression. This men- 
ace of a plutocratic dragonnade is utterly unre- 
publican, it is an unceasing offense, a wanton 



WE COMING CLIMAX 407 

provocation, and can readily open up an avenue 
by which a cataclysm of flame and massacre 
shall descend upon the nation. 

We have used the French revolution to illus- 
trate phases of the social and economic upheav- 
al now going on in America, because there is a 
terribly sinister similarity between them in gen- 
eral aspect. There are the same general com- 
plaints, the same general results of oppressive 
conditions, and the same orders of society in- 
volved, viz., the rich and the poor; for it is in 
material circumstances that you find the essence 
of the conditions which make an aristocrat of 
one and a serf of the other. The misery of the 
working-class in France prior to the revolution 
was doubtless more universal than is now the 
case with the body of American toilers, but it is 
hard to believe that lower deeps of horror in the 
matter of human agony could have then been 
found in France, than this glorious republic is 
now able to show in some of its coke and coal 
mines and city sweater dens. A comparison be- 
tween the working force of France a hundred 
years ago, and that of America to-day, would 
show the same all-pervading discontent and 
smoldering wrath. 



408 THE COMING CLIMAX 

Now let us concede that they have the same 
desperate courage, and then carry their poten- 
tialities onward into action. What the French 
toiler did makes the most dazzling chapter in the 
history of the world. He first overturned his 
own monarchy of eight hundred years, and then, 
under the stimulus of the new-found democratic 
idea, went forth and drove seventeen kings from 
their thrones — and yet the French producer was 
a pigmy where the American is a giant. The 
spiritual nature of the one had been dwarfed 
under ages of darkness and despotism, while the 
soul and moral stature of the other has been ex- 
panded under the light and liberty of more than 
a century of free government. Hence the con- 
structive and destructive possibilities in millions 
of American workingmen, moving as one body 
under a common impulse, fairly awe the mind 
by their immensity. Let the well-fed, well- 
clad and entirely comfortable citizens of the 
United States be warned while there is yet time, 
and thus prevent a cruel and audacious plutoc- 
racy from forcing the nation upon a course whose 
end will surely be perdition. Suppose from any 
cause the prophecy regarding our country made 
by Lord Macaulay in 1857 comes true, and his 



THE COMING CLIMAX 409 

predicted later Goths and Huns of our own rais- 
ing make demonstration of themselves. Sup- 
pose the morning that he surmised at last comes, 
and 150,000 workingmen of one of our great cit- 
ies, who have only had half a breakfast, start 
forth to look for an uncertain dinner. The mil- 
itary is already prepared tor trouble, a riot 
breaks out and the belching cannon and scream- 
ing Gatling-guns plow bloody lanes through the 
dense ranks of the toilers. 

Boom! Boom! Boom! What is that? The 
dynamitard is here. 

"Upon the horizon appears a gloomy form 
illuminated by a light as of hell, who, with lofty 
bearing and a look breathing forth hatred and 
defiance, makes his way through the terrified 
crowd to enter with a firm step upon the scene 
of history. It is the terrorist." Where are the 
military? Gone, annihilated, withered into 
nothingness by an all-devouring flame; and a 
hungry populace crazed with rage are masters. 
The "red terror" of the proletariat drives the 
"white terror" of the plutocracy as the wolf drives 
the sheep. Then the criminal classes, whose 
vile votes have given power to ward politicians 
through whom the plutocrats have pillaged the 



410 THE COMING CLIMAX 

city, within the law, break loose in mad delight 
and pillage the palaces of their masters' masters 
outside of it. Carnage, fire and rapine sweep 
over the mighty metropolis, and the morning's 
sun rises on a ghastly desert of wreckage, which 
if seen by the spirit eyes of Tecumseh and Black 
Hawk, would well justify those Indian patriots 
in exclaiming: "This, then, is the ripened corn 
of the white man's cruel civilization." 

Workingmen are neither thieves nor destruc- 
tionists, but when their own lives are in immi- 
nent peril it is hardly probable that they will 
give much thought to the protection of other 
people's property The leaders, orators and 
reformers who are thoroughly respected by the 
hosts of organized labor, would under ordinary 
circumstances wield a powerful influence on the 
side of peace. But what is the situation of 
these patriotic lovers of humanity to-day? Sup- 
pose a riot of magnitude takes place, in which 
some soldiers and police are killed, in addition 
to large numbers of no-account citizens. The 
labor leaders bravely struggle and strive with 
their own men, and at last get the bulk of them 
away and started toward home. This diversion 
has enabled the plutocratic military to get the 



THE COMING CLIMAX 4ll 

better of the outbreak. The next day the labor 
leaders go to headquarters expecting much praise 
for their noble and courageous work. They say 
to the commanding general: "At terrible risk 
to ourselves we managed to stop the outbreak;" 
when the reply would be thundered at them: 
"You stopped it, did you? What you mean is 
that your anarchistic mouthings started it, and 
we will now see that you never start another. 
Sergeant, take these men downstairs, double 
iron them and lock them up." 

If surface uprisings should take place among 
the producers at different points in the land, so 
as to make the movement for their suppression 
take on a national character — then, if the plu- 
tocratic idea were victorious, this republic would 
come forth from the experience a military des- 
potism ruled by a plutocratic oligarchy. It 
would not matter by what specious name the 
new order of government was called, it would be 
a despotism and nothing less. It would become 
the necessity of the usurpation to push its ad- 
vantages and buttress its future authority to the 
uttermost, and in so doing it must needs be as 
merciless as was Russian absolutism after the 



412 THE COMING CLIMAX 

bomb disposed of Alexander II. Free speech 
and free press would be known no more in the 
land, and a despotic drag-net would gather in 
every patriot who had dared stand forth as a 
champion of the people. The hangman would 
be kept busy, and the jails be filled to overflowing 
with prisoners and suspects. It is obvious that 
the line of conduct herein set forth must be fol- 
lowed by the plutocratic usurpers, because once 
entered upon a course of repression it will be 
necessary for them to make it full and complete, 
both in self-defense and in order to be saved the 
trouble of doing it over again in a few months 
or years. There would be neither reasonable- 
ness nor logic in any action that was not decisive 
in crushing out every possibility of resistance on 
the part of the producers, and in order to do 
this our free institutions must be absolutely sub- 
verted. 

While the plutocrats were thus remorselessly 
trampling our democratic Constitution and re- 
publican traditions under foot, they would 
shout forth to the uneasy middle class: "We 
merely do these things because they are neces- 
sary for the protection of law and order. We 
must rescue our endangered civilization from 



.¥ 



THE COMING CLIMAX 413 

the anarchists. We are the saviors of organized 
society, so let all good patriots rally round the 
starry flag and help us." 

As the Triumphant Plutocracy has come into 
its present power through fraud, craft, and sub- 
tle devices, so would it rely on the same tried 
and effective agencies in establishing its suprem- 
acy on a new and more solid basis. But hold! — 
it is not there yet, nor has it one chance in a 
thousand of ever reaching that finality which it 
so intensely covets. It is, however, in a com- 
manding situation, where it can plunge the re- 
public into bloody horrors, which, as Senator 
Ingalls said, will make the catastrophe of our 
civil war seem puerile. This it will surely do, 
unless restrained by the all-potential protest of a 
united middle class speaking as one determined 
man. In our hypothetical case of a possible 
universal uprising of the working classes in con- 
sequence of being shot down without cause by 
the military when in a condition of enforced 
idleness through financial panic, we referred to 
the Dynamitard. Yes, the Dynamitard will be 
there; of that fact we have no doubt whatsoever; 
and when the Dynamitard comes in the mili- 
tary will go out, for both cannot occupy the 



414 THE COMING CLIMAX 

stage at one time. If there were no Dynami- 
tards, if the name Terrorist had no meaning, 
yet would we be absolutely sure when the crash 
should come between the masses and the classes, 
that the aristocrats would be pulverized out of 
existence the same as they were during the 
French Revolution. 

It is either this, or the American producers 
will have become abject cowards. Let our 
Triumphant Plutocrats be very sure of their 
ground before they begin murdering discontent- 
ed workingmen with shot and shell, for any 
radical mistake in judgment on their part will be 
signing their own death-warrants. Before the 
plutocrats enter upon a course of massacre, let 
them be satisfied that our toilers have become 
as dastardly craven as the slavish Hindoos, of 
whom a thousand can be bullied and kept down 
by one English soldier. If the American work- 
ingman be, as we truly believe, a brave man, then 
when millions of his kind stand at bay, let the 
plutocrats be warned against shedding their 
blood in the expectation of conquering them, for 
they cannot be so crushed but that they in their 
turn can crush with terrific power. An old saw 
says, "Beware the wrath of a good-natured man." 



THE COMING CLIMAX 415 

When these millions of workingmen walk forth 
with their long-brooded sense of wrong, in a 
white heat of rage, then at this critical moment 
if the plutocrats are anxious indirectly to com- 
mit suicide, all they will have to do in order to 
accomplish that end, will be to open on the 
banded workers with muskets and Gatling-guns. 
The best of men cannot answer for their actions 
under the provocation of cruel insult, so who 
shall give warrant for the deeds of the uprisen 
lowly in their hour of triumphant hate? The 
French revolution taught us something of the 
tremendous forces that lie latent in the great 
sub-soil of humanity, but this demonstration of 
destructive power would seem trivial when com- 
pared with that made by the exasperated Ameri- 
can toilers in their day of victory. The labor 
leaders and reformers could do next to nothing 
in the way of mollifying matters while the fierce 
fever of popular rage was having its will, and 
they would not try to do anything, for if through 
their influence the flood passed by with the plu- 
tocrats still on top, their necks would feel the 
halter. Consequently they will wait until the 
wave of devastation has spent itself, after utter- 
ly destroying the plutocrats; then they will help 
re-organize society. 



416 THE COMING CLIMAX 

But the Dynamitard is still here, biding his 
time. He comes from all over the world, be- 
cause national and racial lines have vanished 
among the men who love liberty and humanity. 
The revolutionists of all the Caucasian peoples 
are well convinced that America is destined to 
be, in the future as in the past, the pioneer 
nation which shall break the way to a larger free- 
dom and prosperity for all mankind. They 
recognize that the United States is the most 
fitting place for the birth of the long-looked-for 
New Dispensation, that shall finally bring eman- 
cipation to the enslaved peoples everywhere. 
Therefore these men of culture, these men of 
infinite sacrifice, these men of terrible science, 
these fanatical lovers of liberty and humanity 
are here, — would they were not, for they are 
storm-birds, who bring token of the cyclone and 
cloud-burst, — but here indeed they are, drawn 
by a mysterious magnetism to the predestined 
theater of momentous events; and they speak 
of internationalism, the brotherhood of man and 
the universal republic that gleamed on the 
vision of Tennyson as he gazed out over the 
western sea from the colonnade of Locksley 
Hall. This contingent of foreign terrorists. 



THE COMING CLIMAX 417 

however, is small and insignificant when com- 
pared with the number of native-born Americans 
who will turn Dynamitards if the time ever comes 
when this country is in danger of passing under 
despotism. The writer not long since had a 
casual call from one such. He was born of Irish 
parentage and west of the Mississippi River. He 
had been an officer in the war of the rebellion 
and afterward a sea captain, mountaineer and 
gold miner. He had no family, and love for 
liberty and humanity was with him an all-pos- 
sessing passion. Dickens' description of Er- 
nest Defarge, who led the proletariat of Saint 
Antoine in the assault of the Bastille, applied to 
him well: "He was a dark man altogether, with 
good eyes and a good bold breadth between them, 
good-humored looking on the whole, but impla- 
cable-looking too. Evidently a man of a strong 
resolution and a set purpose, a man not desir- 
able to be met rushing down a narrow pass with 
a gulf on either side, for nothing would turn 
the man." 

In the course of our conversation this man of 
dread menace, who drifted so strangely in from 
the unknown and then vanished back again out 

of ken, did thus speak: 

27 



418 THE COMING CLIMAX 

"I see from your writings that you are fully 
aware of the troubles that may come to the 
country, and are striving to wake up the people 
to a knowledge of them so that they can be pre- 
vented. You are a sanguine optimist, but all 
your work, as well as that of thousands of other 
writers and orators who are doing their best in 
the interests of peaceful reform, will come to 
nothing. The inevitable revolution that is now 
rushing down on the country will come in blood, 
just as have all other great revolutions, for it 
will be the only way in which the common 
people of the country can prevent their liber- 
ties from being taken away from them by the 
monopolists. The people will not commence 
the fight, but the monopolists will, for they are 
now busily preparing for it, and mean to over- 
turn the republic. But they cannot do it, for 
they will be stopped; there are plenty of old 
soldiers and patriotic Americans who will not 
stand by and see these millionaires do up the 
free institutions of the nation and make the 
people slaves — and I am one of them. I have 
experimented for years in explosives, in expec- 
tation of the monopolists making an attempt 
to subjugate the masses. A couple of years ago 
some good friends and myself went down on a 
lonely stretch of ocean sand, and there tried a 
lot of my bombs. I have invented a machine 
for throwing them that is modeled somewhat on 
the plan of the ancient balista and catapult, 
which were used for throwing projectiles into 
walled cities; but any one can make a crude but 



HE COMING CLIMAX 419 

effective engine to throw bombs a long distance 
with a twisted rope and a stout barrel-stave. 
Well, we gave my outfit a show down there on 
a desolate beach of the Pacific, miles away from 
any house. I calculated a quarter of a mile as 
near as I could and let the machine go. When 
the bomb struck there was a tremendous explo- 
sion that threw a cloud of sand a half a mile up 
in the air. We walked up to where the bomb lit 
and there was a hole like the crater of a vol- 
cano. If this city was garrisoned by the entire 
United States army, I could take it with two 
hundred brave men. I might destroy the city, 
but I could take it away from the military, be- 
cause it would be impossible for them to main- 
tain either company, regimental or brigade or- 
ganization against my bombs, and the moment 
they were dispersed a mob of workingmen, that 
outnumbered them a hundred to one, would 
dispose of the scattered individual soldiers. As 
for that castle the millionaires have built on 
Michigan avenue, I could level that to the earth 
in ten minutes and not go within five blocks of 
it." 

The writer will not soon forget this man of 
the fierce eyes and flaming words, for he incar- 
nated a long-haunting fear. He was the visible 
proof of a suspected fact, though before un- 
seen he was affirmed from the inexorable logic of 
the situation, just as an astronomer predicts an 
unknown asteroid from certain perturbations on 



420 THE COMING CLIMAX 

the part of known planets. This dynamitard 
Irish-American Major, with tens, hundreds, 
thousands and scores of thousands of his kind, 
can be confidently declared existent in a great 
republic, where the lower millions are devoted 
to the democratic idea in human government, 
and at the same time believe that an aristocratic 
oligarchy is conspiring against its life and their 
liberty at one and the same time. That is pre- 
cisely the condition of affairs in the United States 
to-day, and consequently possible dynamitards 
are lying perdu in all ranks of society. "They 
must be found and locked up," quoth the plu- 
tocrat. Find the mournful cry of the Whip- 
poor-will, which thrilled through the magical 
silence of a long-gone summer night, and make 
it pipe its note through a child's trumpet. Gath- 
er in your handkerchief the fragrance of the 
clover blooms in which you tumbled as a boy. 
When you have done these things, you may hope 
to search out the Winkelrieds who will make 
way for liberty, and the men of Thermopylae 
pass who will die for it, among the social throng 
that walk ever in impenetrable masquerade. It 
is a time of artifice, sham and semblance, in 
which few can know their neighbors; but under- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 42l 

heath the pasteboard, the paint and gaudy frip- 
peries that make the seeming, there are men, 
real men of brave hearts, hot blood and strong 
muscles, with the will to do and the soul to dare, 
all that patriots may or heroes can, for liberty, 
the rights of man and Washington's republic. 

If the black day ever comes when an armed 
despotism seeks to overthrow our free institu- 
tions, and the imperial artillerist is ready to pull 
the lanyard that holds death for the lowly, then 
from the laboratory of the chemist and the ex- 
perimenter's secret chamber, will leap forth 
humanity's sanctified ones, with the martyr-light 
in their faces and the deadliest weapons of science 
in their hands. 

A dread duel is now threatened, and it will 
come off, unless the omnipotent middle class 
stops it by taking instant preventive measures, 
in the way of righteous reforms that shall be 
conceived in love and justice, and born in ten- 
der service to suffering mankind. So long as we 
have a working class bitterly disaffected toward 
existing conditions, so long as we have a haughty 
plutocracy ready to make cruel use of military 
force, our national peace exists at the mercy of 
a financial panic; and when the explosion comes 



422 THE COMING CLIMAX 

it is liable to leave all our great cities masses of 
smoking ruins, with the plutocrats gone and the 
people triumphant in the midst of desolation. 
Then must come a half-century of terrible toil 
in order to rebuild society. In the name of 
God and humanity, let us be wise in time, and 
thus put away even a remote possibility of this 
horror. 

Did you ever stop to think that this awful 
dynamite may have an exalted mission for the 
human race ? Men who hold faith in God, scorn 
the atheistic formulae of the scientist with its 
blind force, fortuitous concurrences and unguid- 
ed evolutions. The devout declare that all the 
agencies that have to do with the civilization of 
man had their genesis in the vast unseen, and 
are sent forth into the world by a superhuman 
intelligence of unbounded beneficence. 

Motley says: "When Berthold Swartz in his 
monkish cell combined niter, charcoal and sul- 
phur, the iron-clad man on horseback reeled in 
his saddle." Feudalism with its unchanging 
status was doomed, and modern enlightenment 
became possible, but war with its wreckage and 
slaughter passed not away, because aristocratic 



The coming climax 423 

privilege made gunpowder its servant. But now 
comes Dynamite, and Dynamite is an uncom- 
promising democrat. He scoffs at the costly can- 
non and intricate rifle and declines to serve there- 
in; he is most at home and does his best work in 
a five-cent bomb, and henceforth and forever, 
so long as nitric acid, hog-fat and porous earth 
dwell together in unity until put asunder by the 
magic spark, no people with courage can ever lose 
their freedom, and so soon as a race puts oft 
slavery and puts on bravery it is free of all 
tyrants. 

There can be no more Napoleonic coups 
d'etat by which a fiendish usurper mounts to a 
throne on murdered men as stepping-stones. 
No more can an ambitious military dictator with 
a dissolute army of thousands put chains on 
millions of peaceful workers. There will be no 
more repetitions of Pizarro, Cortez and Maxi- 
milian conquests on this hemisphere, for Dyna- 
mite the democrat will say them nay. The 
soldier-despot makes his triumph over a host of 
non-combatants, by reason of close-ranked for- 
mations. Against these, Dynamite the democrat 
holds special spite and scatters them afar. 

With dynamite every garret window, every 



424 THE COMING CLIMAX 

doorway and house-top becomes a death-dealing 
Gibraltar. The day of the professional man- 
killer is over, for Dynamite the democrat has so 
declared it. Peace is civilization and war is 
barbarism. What a dismal prospect for an aspir- 
ing humanity, that no matter how enlightened 
and spiritualized a nation may become, it must 
still maintain a vast standing army in order to 
defend itself against outside barbarians. We 
will say nothing of such a nation feeling the need 
of protection against savages of its own rais- 
ing, for this dragon's-teeth crop becomes impos- 
sible in a government that is truly Christian. 
Men can only attain high civilization by the 
arts of peace. These require the light of liberty 
and free hands in order to show their best work, 
and military establishments tend to shut out the 
one and chain the other. Hence it is impossible 
for a people to develop the noblest capabilities 
that are within them, under the menacing shadow 
of a standing army. It must be put away, but 
this cannot be done with safety while nations 
that lag behind in the march of human progress 
remain in the warlike stage, and devote their 
main energies to the practice of arms, for they 
would on occasion invade and make spoil of the 



The coming climax 425 

more cultured and peaceful people. If the reg- 
ular army goes, some other effective means for 
protecting a high order of civilization against 
barbaric attack must come in, and dynamite is 
providentially at hand. Its application realizes 
the marvels told of Vril by Bulwer in his novel 
"The Coming Race." The desolating march of 
mighty armies shall be no more, for Dynamite 
the democrat shall swiftly consume them with 
his hot breath, and thus this seeming genius of 
destruction becomes the herald of the new cycle 
of peace. 

While the great cities of the United States 
might be inundated by the revolutionary lava 
and vanish as completely from the country as 
did Pompeii and Herculaneum, the vast rural 
districts need not necessarily be much disturbed 
by these metropolitan cataclysms, and after the 
storm was over the farmers could come to town 
and build anew on the old sites. The American 
farmer boys have made and kept up our Ameri- 
can centers of trade, and if it were not for the 
fresh blood that is continually poured in from 
the country, every metropolis in the United 
States would soon wither away and die of in- 
anition. 



42(3 THE COMING CLIMAX 

Although synchronous upheavals in all our 
great cities might not materially affect the peace 
and regular order of affairs in the agricultural 
sections, any general disturbance in the rural 
districts would react on the big towns with dis- 
astrous celerity. 

Start from the Canadian border, with a stretch 
of territory extending from the head-waters of 
the Mississippi to the base of the Rocky Mount- 
ains, and proceed south, taking in Minnesota, 
the two Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Idaho, 
Wyoming, Colorado, Missouri, Arkansas and 
Texas, then sweep eastward to the Atlantic, with 
Mason's and Dixon's line on the north and the 
Gulf of Mexico on the south, and you have a 
section that contains four million organized 
farmers. If you will carefully read the declar- 
ation of principles under which they are frater- 
nally banded together, you will see that they 
practically assert that the United States gov- 
ernment is now being run by chartered gangs of 
robbers, whose sole business it is to make spoil 
of the producers. This is a tolerably serious 
situation in a country that is specially given over 
to lynch law, white caps, mobs and vigilance 
committees. A few years ago the farmers of 



THE COMING CLIMAX 427 

the country went on the principle of "every 
man for himself ;" they had no associations for 
mutual help, and rarely met. 

Outside of their immediate neighborhoods 
the agricultural toilers were total strangers to 
one another, and were not conscious of a grand 
community of interest, that embraced the farm- 
ers of their respective counties, extended itself 
throughout their several states, and at last in- 
cluded all men of their class in the country at 
large. Twenty-five years ago the American 
farmer was the most secluded mortal on the 
face of the earth. His segregation from his 
own kind was well-nigh complete. He plowed, 
tilled, harvested and bore the produce of his 
acres to market, all on his own account, for his 
own benefit, and he let every other farmer do 
the same. This condition of narrow self-absorp- 
tion froze the warm currents of his soul and 
dwarfed him of his rightful stature as a moral, 
intellectual and social being. 

While the farmer remained in this state of 
voluntary isolation from his fellows, millionaire 
corporations commenced a series of outrages on 
the tillers of the soil of the great West. Homes 
were stolen from thousands of farmers, by Des 



428 THE COMING CLIMAX 

Moines river-pirates, bogus Mexican land-grant 
holders and Pacific railway plunderers, with 
their Mussel Slough massacres, while over the 
West lawless wealth organized for brigandage 
and possible murder as against the lowly tillers 
of the soil, and no mighty uprising of the banded 
farmers said them "Nay," because every indi- 
vidual farmer continued steadily at his exclusive 
task of "looking out for number one." At last 
the time came when this selfish policy brought 
its own punishment and the farmers found them- 
selves in the position of a flock of sheep sur- 
rounded by ravaging wolves. They ascertained 
that the railways were taxing them more than 
the traffic would bear and let the tiller of the 
soil live and enjoy the comforts he had earned. 
The money power was leagued against him and 
charged an interest for the use of cash that 
meant ruin, while the trusts, combines and specu- 
lators were joined in an unholy alliance to rob 
him of the last shred of his prosperity and finally 
reduce him to the condition of a serf. Then 
uprose the oppressed and indignant farmers and 
began counter-organizations against their cruel 
and grasping foes. The Patrons of Husbandry 
first planted the seeds of unity and fraternity in 



THE COMING CLIMAX 429 

rich soil; then came the fruitage in the shape of 
Farmers' Alliances, Agricultural Wheels, Farm- 
ers' Mutual Benefit Associations and Patrons 
of Industry, until now five million embattled 
farmers are banded brothers in a common cause. 
The farmers of the country, as a class, have 
made a larger degree of moral and intellectual ad- 
vancement during the last four years than in the 
preceding twenty, and it can be credited directly 
to their great fraternal societies. These organi- 
zations cultivate brotherly affection, mutual 
helpfulness, and make an injury to one the con- 
cern of all. They have faith in Christianity and 
believe in practicing it ; they love God and also 
their fellow-men, and give devoted loyalty to 
liberty, justice and the reign of righteous laws; 
they are uncompromisingly patriotic, and any 
scheming power that seeks to overthrow the 
American republic, either by fraud or force, will 
first have to conquer the leagued farmers of this 
democratic government. It is unfortunate for 
the future peace of the country that this mighty 
army of producers firmly believe that a pluto- 
cratic usurpation is now in possession of the na- 
tion. They know that corporate bribery and 
evil influence have debauched judicial purity and 



430 THE COMING CLIMAX 

corrupted legislative honesty. They believe this 
to be true wherever either the democratic or the 
republican party is in power. 

To have the entire mechanism of government 
profoundly distrusted by millions of worthy citi- 
zens, is a dangerous condition, and it is unfortu- 
nately that of the American republic to-day. 
Let us look at this unpleasant status without 
flinching and see if there be not grave peril in it. 
The English revolutions of 1640 and 1688, and 
our own of 1776, grew out of precisely the same 
state of affairs. The people believed the gov- 
ernment was run for purposes of oppression and 
spoliation. They first lost all respect for its 
authority, then hated it, and at length overthrew 
it. 

To say that the mere name and form of a re- 
public will protect a usurping despotism from 
being violently ousted, is manifestly absurd. A 
practical subversion of democratic government 
would not be long tolerated by a people accus- 
tomed to be free. There is a general belief 
abroad among the common folks of this country 
that the judges, officials and lawmakers are 
owned by the monopolists and exercise their 
functions for them and against the producers. 



THE COMING CLIMAX 431 

This conviction is peculiarly intense in several 
great farming states west of the Missouri River. 
The relations between the working masses and 
the official classes are in a perilously strained 
condition there, and it is entirely improbable 
that they can long continue in that situation 
without a dangerous rupture. Any one knowing 
American human nature must be certain that 
it will occur sooner or later, and the consequences 
will be terrible in the last degree. 

Out in Kansas last summer, the farmers of a 
township forcibly turned out the tenant of a for- 
eign loan company and put back a neighbor 
farmer who had been evicted. A similar deed is 
liable to occur at any time in that scandalously 
be-mortgaged state. Suppose when it takes 
place a sheriff's force of saloon-bums and thugs 
goes out full-armed and reinstates the loan com- 
pany's serf. The farmers gather again, a thug 
pulls trigger and kills one of the farmers; then the 
angry farmers annihilate the thugs. Word goes 
to town that the farmers are in open rebellion. 
More thugs are sent out with a company of mi- 
litia at their backs, farmers swarm from the 
whole county, a skirmish takes place and again 
the English loan companies' Hessians are routed. 



432 THE COMING CLIMAX 

Here is war; the governor calls out the whole 
force of the state and appeals to the President 
for regular troops. In the present combustible 
condition of the farmers, this single event would 
be enough to set rural America aflame from the 
Potomac to the Rio Grande and from the St. 
John to the Red River of the North. Any one 
who says the contrary, is ignorant of the state of 
affairs, and simply does not know what he is 
talking about. Please go back to the summer 
of 1877 and note how a little argument as to 
their pay on the part of some employees of the 
Baltimore and Ohio railroad extended in three 
days to a railway strike that involved half of the 
Mississippi Valley. The conditions then were 
tame and pacific compared with what they are 
now. 

Tens of thousands of local farmers' and labor- 
ers' societies are scattered all through the vast 
area that lies between the Alleghenies and 
Rockies, each one of which has special griev- 
ances against the local representatives of the 
plutocracy as well as general ones against the 
entire plutocratic array of the nation. All these 
millions are organized, and could be formed into 
a national vigilance committee, as easily as the 



THE COMING CLIMAX 433 

German troops were mobilized into a conquering 
army at the outbreak of the Franco-German 
war. 

Could any such general movement be put 
down ? It is absurd even to discuss the proba- 
bility of its being crushed by force. Suppose 
that Kansas were the main seat of war and the 
Government should attempt to throw troops in 
there: In the first place railway employees 
would not haul them, and if they did, ten thou- 
sand miles of railway track could be upturned in 
a night after the manner of Sherman's soldiers, 

In an emergency such as indicated — and re- 
member it is one that can easily come to pass — 
if the Government, pushed on by the plutocrats, 
should despise policy and conciliation and pro- 
ceed to shoot it out of existence, it would fail, 
and fail most deplorably. Such a course would 
unchain the demons of rage by the million, and 
a deluge of fire and flood would submerge the 
nation. The reflex action of a national vigi- 
lance committee would kill business dead, and 
the "red terror" would stalk abroad in all our 
great cities. We have only indicated one avenue 
through which a farmers' vigilance committee 

might enter upon the scene of national history, 

28 



434 THE COMING CLIMAX 

while there are as many of them as there are 
towns in the rural districts. It might be an in- 
famous ruling of a judge, an outrageous veto of 
just laws by a governor, or the assassination of 
a farmer leader as Col. Wood was assassinated 
in Kansas. When the powder is exposed any 
passing spark will ignite it. 

The railways make the circulatory system of 
the nation — let it get radically out of order and 
we are undone. A number of years ago, Gen. 
Sheridan remarked that our half-million railway 
men, including engineers, firemen, brakemen, 
switchmen, trackmen and conductors, could be 
turned into the most powerful army on the face 
of the earth in thirty days. Why ? Because they 
were already disciplined to working together; 
second, they were very intelligent; third, they 
were exceptionally brave and self-possessed in the 
presence of danger; and fourth, they were, as a 
rule, strong and muscular young men. This 
shrewd observation by Gen. Sheridan certifies 
that he was a military genius of the first rank. 
His announcement of this conviction was not 
kept a secret: why then has not our Triumphant 
Plutocracy made a provisional army out of the 



THE COMING CLIMAX 435 

railway men? The Pinkerton thugs are re- 
cruited from the criminals and riff-raff of society, 
and must always be an uncertain quantity in 
time of actual peril, yet the plutocrats pay over 
a million dollars per month to keep up this force 
of unreliable Hessians. Now an expenditure of 
thirty millions per annum would place and keep 
all these railway men on a war footing, and let 
them do their regular work at the same time. 
Why is this not done, when by the doing of it 
the plutocracy could have at its command the 
most resistless host of warriors in the world ? 

It is not done for the simple reason that the 
railway men are a very stubborn order of patri- 
ots; they believe in the democratic idea, and 
love Washington's republic. They are men of 
the people, and they will certainly fight for the 
people, when fighting comes to be necessary. 
Moreover, they hate the plutocrats — please re- 
member the plutocrats own • the railways and 
put five parts of water to one part of actual in- 
vestment and then demand big interest on their 
bogus capital. In order to get it, they not only 
tax the traffic of the farmer most infamously, 
but hammer down the pay of their employees to 
the lowest notch. For fifteen years war has 



436 THE COMING CLIMAX 

raged unceasingly between the millionaire railway 
owners and humble railway workers. The free- 
souled and justice-loving employees have been 
conspired against by the plutocrats; they have 
been remorselessly persecuted; they have been 
sent to the penitentiary on perjured testimony; 
they have been shot down in cold blood. Is it 
any wonder that the railway toilers hate the 
millionaire railway owners? They are now or- 
ganized half a million strong, for the sole pur- 
pose of defending themselves against the oppres- 
sion of railway corporations. Their federated 
societies have no other meaning save this, and 
nothing less urgent could have called them into 
being. At the time of the great railway strike 
of 1877, the railway workers were practically 
unorganized, but our business men remember 
the stunning shock then given to the commerce 
of the country. Beware of the next one, for 
that of y yy will be to it as a summer zephyr to 
a West India hurricane. All railway employees 
are now prepared for a gigantic strike that will 
lock every wheel in America. They confidently 
expect it and know it must come sooner or later. 
A distinguished leader of the railway men, who 
is a man of learning and eloquence and a pas- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 437 

sionate lover of liberty and justice, said to the 
writer, "The next great strike will see the rail- 
way men come out on top, or the United States 
Government will go to pieces." 

The universal strike in question is simply in- 
evitable if the present unjust conditions be kept 
up, and the fate that will befall our great cities 
when it happens readily suggests itself. Our 
grand republic has been credited with a su- 
preme capacity to endure shocks. We have ex- 
ultantly declared that this great American de- 
mocracy could pass comparatively unharmed 
through trying experiences that would pulverize 
a monarchy or aristocracy out of existence. Our 
happy nation has been likened unto a raft of 
logs descending one of our western rivers. It 
might run aground on sand-bars, grind over 
rocks, be swept against the shore and encounter 
divers other casualties, but it could not be 
wrecked. This comparison was most apposite 
and altogether true so long as our Government 
was entirely dominated by the democratic idea, 
because then we were invulnerable to external 
assault, by reason of the patriotic unity of a 
mighty people. 

By changes that were gradual and unsus- 



4SS The coming climax 

pected, the nation has been imperceptibly trans- 
formed, until now, although a republic in theory, 
it has become an oligarchy in practice. This un- 
natural condition is a direct violation of the law 
of its healthful being, and our nation at the 
present time is sick of a fever. While the en- 
tire strength of the republic would doubtless be 
put forth with glad willingness to resist a foreign 
foe, we are the weakest nation under the sun 
when threatened by a domestic discontent that 
is wide-spread and deep. Such discontent is 
abnormal in a republic, and hence is dangerous. 
It is quite natural in a despotism, for the whole 
mechanism of absolute government is adjusted 
to meet and overcome precisely that kind of a 
peril. 

A democracy has neither the weapons nor plan 
wherewith to front such an emergency, and it 
would stultify itself if in its organic law it made 
preparation for any such event. The sheriff's 
posse is always at hand to take care of a mob 
whose spasmodic spring results from causes that 
are local and temporary, but anything greater 
than this the repressive laws of the republic 
never contemplated. It will not do to instance 
the War of the Rebellion in disproof of this as- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 33D 

Sertion. That conflict in its essence was a war 
between two nations, and is so regarded both 
by ourselves and the outside world. If this be 
not so, why do the North and South, to this 
day, build monuments to their great generals 
and give proud celebration to battle days of 
victory ? If our Government were now adminis- 
tered on lines loyal to the democratic idea, the 
present discontent that is spread all through the 
working stratum of society would be promptly 
met by remedial legislation. That this is not 
done, and done freely and generously, shows 
that a force alien to our institutions has come 
into command of the Government. This intrud- 
ing power is the Triumphant Plutocracy, and it 
now looks rather to the repression of the effects 
of abuses, than to their removal. In entering 
upon this unrepublican course, it essays an im- 
possible task. It stands accused as a usurper 
by the great plain people of America, and all 
the traditions of our republic are ranged against 
it. If, at last, the plutocracy ventures by des- 
potic deed to negative the democratic affirmation 
which declares that ours shall be a government 
of the people, by the people, and for the people, 
it will oppose itself to an omnipotent power 



440 THE COMING CLIMAX 

whose full strength it shall not know until it is 
crushed by it. 

Only knaves and fools will misinterpret the 
purpose of the writer of this book, for it stands 
revealed on every page to the reader who is just 
and wise. 

A coming climax in the destiny of the republic 
is felt, feared and spoken of by orators and 
writers without number, but they have mainly 
confined themselves to vague and brief predic- 
tions of general disaster, and have declined to 
go into specific details as to its character or 
mode of expression. This deficiency the author 
has aimed to supply. If this somber treatise 
shall call forth a philosopher who can look closer 
and clearer into the actual situation of the re- 
public — if some master seer shall authoritatively 
pionounce its premises mistaken, its arguments 
fallacious and its conclusion of calamity illogi- 
cal — none will be more thankful than he who 
wrote this book. 



CHAPTER XX 

THE TASK THAT IMPLORES US 

•'The common problem, yours, mine, every one's, 
Is, not to fancy what were fair in life 
Provided it could be, but finding first 
What may be, then strive how to make it fair, 

Up to our means." — [Robert Browning. 

In 1856 Roger B. Taney was Chief Justice of 
the Supreme Court of the United States. In 
that year a majority of this tribunal of final 
appeal decided that under the Constitution and 
laws of the American republic, a negro had no 
rights which a white man was bound to respect. 
This particular ruling, on the part of our most 
exalted judicial authority, has passed into his- 
tory as the "Dred Scott Decision." One lone 
black man asked his liberty of a great democracy 
through its court of last resort. He was denied 
and doomed to slavery until death; but the trial 
ended not with this decree. A few years later 
and the higher law of God was applied to the 
case. The judgment of the supreme bench of 

the United States was reversed, and the lives of 
441 



442 THE COMING CLIMAX 

half a million white men were paid down as a 
part of the costs of court, which goes to prove 
that litigation carried to the bar of the Almighty 
is apt to be expensive for the loser of the suit. 

The Dred Scott decision gave official notice to 
men and angels that this republic is founded on 
atheism, and that declaration has never been 
amended nor annulled. It stands just the same 
now as it did on that long-vanished day, when 
Chief Justice Taney and his associates sent Dred 
Scott back to bondage, and then took off their 
gowns and went home to dinner. Our Govern- 
ment denies both God and the devil, and knows 
neither abstract right nor wrong, but leaves 
good and evil to be determined by haphazard 
statutes that may be drawn to serve the inter- 
ests of selfish men. 

When any grave question arises concerning 
the relations of the state with its citizens, the 
Supreme Court, acting as a conclave of augurs, 
seek instruction by poring over certain sacred 
sibylline leaves called a Constitution. The 
venerated words of this instrument are fre- 
quently so vague and of such dubious meaning, 
that after the judges have had one another by 
the ears for months, a strong minority will posi- 



THE COMING CLIMAX 443 

tively dissent from the interpretation given by 
the majority, and this uncertain chart is the sole 
guidance of the republic's master mariners, as 
our ship of state sails into the vastness of un- 
known seas. Is it any wonder that great rocks 
of peril continually loom up out of the mist, and 
that shipwreck is ever threatened? There can 
be no assurance of safety for the future of the 
nation until its course is shaped by the unchang- 
ing polar star of the moral law. "Conscience, 
the oracle of God," must be first consulted, when 
men would make rules for the government of 
their fellows. All statutes must be pronounced 
good by that supernal authority before they be- 
come operative, and edicts already in existence, 
which fall under its condemnation, must be 
branded as "devil law" and sentenced to annihi- 
lation. 

The jurists who gave the Dred Scott decision 
sleep in unhonored graves, their immortal souls 
went before God guilty of treason to the divine 
law, but as citizens they were sinless because 
they gave undeviating loyalty to the Constitu- 
tion of an atheistic order of society of which 
they were the supreme conservators. These 
dead judges were entirely satisfied that they 



444 THE COMING CLIMAX 

only did their official duty in declaring that the 
highest law of the United States gave warrant 
and legal sanctity to a system that doomed mill- 
ions of lowly people to hopeless ignorance, un- 
requited toil and cruel oppression. Lineal suc- 
cessors of those jurisconsults who have gone to 
the greater judgment, now occupy the Supreme 
Bench of the republic. They wear the same 
gowns; they are guided by the same forms; 
they venerate the same traditions; they give de- 
votion to the same Constitution and uphold the 
same atheistic practice of government as did the 
judges who fastened manacles on the wrists of 
Dred Scott. 

If next week or next year a case is brought 
before the Supreme Court of the United States, 
that in effect involves the present issue between 
the plutocrats and the producers, what will be 
the probable result? We know that the Su- 
preme judges of Dred Scott's time decided that 
the Missouri compromise was unconstitutional 
after it had stood unchallenged for more than 
thirty years. It is well established that our tri- 
bunal of last resort makes short work of acts of 
Congress, and after they have given their final 
judgment, nothing can change it except an 



THE COMING CLIMAX 445 

amendment to the Constitution or a revolution. 
Suppose that the national Congress passes 
sweeping laws that do justice to the producers 
by limiting the ravages of the corporations. The 
plutocrats promptly carry the case before the 
Supreme Bench. That high and honorable 
court, after much deliberation, announces that 
the legislation complained of is unwarranted by 
the Constitution and is therefore null and void. 
The advocates who appear for the people mov- 
ingly argue that this judgment will bring mill- 
ions of toilers to poverty, misery and degrada- 
tion. "All that is nothing to us," quoth the 
Chief Justice. "This is not a board of charity 
commissioners, but is the Supreme Court of the 
United States, whose special function it is to 
pass upon the constitutionality of all laws that 
come forth from the legislative department of 
the government. If you should prove to us that 
our action would cause fifty millions of people 
to die of starvation, both our duty and our deed 
must remain the same. If you would have re- 
lief, go back to the people and bid them so 
change the Constitution that this legislation, 
which we now pronounce null and void, shall be 
in harmony with it," 



446 THE COMING CLIMAX 

The monumental egotism of the founders of 
this republic, who framed the Constitution, is re- 
sponsible for the present undemocratic state of 
the nation. The revolutionary fathers had all 
the materials at hand, and were able to con- 
struct a new order of government precisely as 
they saw fit. There was no Supreme Court to 
say them nay. As their high task approached 
completion, they became enraptured with the 
perfection of their own work, and were much 
concerned lest succeeding generations should 
botch it in trying to improve upon it. They 
had supreme confidence in their own wisdom, 
but were doubtful about the men who were to 
come after them. They themselves had unlim- 
ited scope in the way of construction, but they 
did not esteem it safe to allow their successors 
equal freedom of action. The fathers saw the 
evil of primogeniture in the case of property, and 
provided against it, and then immediately pro- 
ceeded to entail the political institutions of the 
country, by piling up difficulties in the way of 
changing the fundamental law. The method of 
amending the Constitution devised by them is 
so slow, cumbersome and vexatious, as to be 
utterly unsuited for a pressing emergency, where 



THE COMING CLIMAX 447 

the needs of the people are instant and demand 
prompt relief. 

There have only been fifteen amendments to 
the Constitution in over a hundred years, and 
most of them were passed in the early history of 
the republic, to supply obvious defects and 
omissions. Thus far amendments have been 
made with practically no opposition. The thir- 
teenth amendment, which abolished slavery, 
merely registered the result of the war, while the 
fifteenth, which gave the freed negro a vote, 
was its logical corollary. 

Now let a time come when millions of pro- 
ducers demand legislation which they must have 
in order to save themselves from poverty and 
ruin. Let the Supreme Court decide that the 
relief laws desired are unconstitutional. Then 
let the great plain people strive to amend the 
Constitution with the antiquated and time-con- 
suming mechanism now at hand. Let them en- 
deavor to do this with all the power, wealth and 
influence of the Triumphant Plutocracy ranged 
solidly against them, and they shall perchance 
find the task beyond their capacity. It will be 
a black day for the republic when the people 
are thus denied. There will be evil times ahead 



448 THE COMING CLIMAX 

when the masses can only remove a clause in 
the Constitution that bars popular progress by 
defying and ignoring the entire instrument. It 
will be hard times when the people are obliged to 
violate the letter of our democratic law in order 
to fulfill the spirit of it. 

This American republic is going to be ruled by 
the living generation and not by dead ones. We 
are now plainly passing out of an old cycle and 
into a new. We are coming into the most 
amazing reconstructive epoch in our history. 
Old conditions that have done their part and 
become outworn will be put away 

When individual men want to reform them- 
selves and enter upon a better and braver life, 
society joins to make the way easy and give 
them every possible advantage. Our Govern- 
ment is, however, built on a plan that makes 
the reformation of it an almost impossible task 
if a rich and powerful body of citizens array 
themselves against the good work. 

The onflow of the evolutionary forces, that 
are now pushing this republic into a new dispen- 
sation, will not long be denied. Their construct- 
ive mission is manifest and no earthly power 



THE COMING CLIMAX 449 

can long hinder them. Patriots and statesmen 
should see to it that they are given the largest 
chance for free expression; this means peace to 
the nation and orderly progress. If on the con- 
trary a Triumphant Plutocracy strives to wall out 
this revivifying flood, it will at last break through 
all barriers, and great may be the destruction 
wrought by it. As a condition precedent to the 
peaceful coming of needed reforms, that will de- 
clare themselves in any event, the amendment 
of the Constitution of the United States should 
be made easy, and the first amendment to our 
fundamental law should be to that end. 

It should be so changed that an amendment 
to the Constitution can be voted on by the whole 
body of citizens when one-third of the citizens, 
including women, have petitioned to that effect. 
These petitions could be summed up for each 
county, by the clerk thereof, and the result 
transmitted to the secretary of each state, who 
would aggregate it for the state, and send the 
result to the secretary of the interior at Wash- 
ington. If the sum total for the nation showed 
one-third of the total vote cast at the last Pres- 
idential election, a special election for the pur- 
pose of taking the popular vote on said pro- 

2 9 



450 THE COMING CLIMAX 

jected amendment could be set sixty days ahead, 
and if at that time two-thirds of the entire vote 
cast was for the amendment it should become 
a part of the fundamental law of the land. 

This would be carrying out the democratic 
idea in human government, and if this nation is 
to continue to be a republic, the people must 
be trusted to govern themselves. They will 
govern themselves finally, no matter what hostile 
force says them nay, and as this end is inevita- 
ble, it would be well to make the task as easy 
and peaceful for them as possible. 

The sixteenth amendment to the Constitu- 
tion of the United States should be one to make 
its future amendment simple and speedy. 

A distinguished American judge once said in 
private conversation, that the jurisprudence of 
the United States put property ahead of men. 
This is true, because our legal system is practically 
of English make. We brought the common law 
of England over with us and adapted it to our 
new condition so far as possible. In Great 
Britain, after the law has taken precious good 
care of the special privileges of the crown and 
nobility, it expends all the rest of its authority 
in the guardianship of property, Jn applying 



THE COMING CLIMAX 451 

the protective quality of the English common 
law in America, it all went to the care of prop- 
erty. This is so strictly true that all personal 
injuries finally resolve themselves into a matter 
of damage to be paid for in dollars. It is all one, 
whether it be alienation of a wife, slander of 
character, seduction of a daughter, or physical 
maltreatment, the law presumes dollars will pay 
for all. De Tocqueville's sharp eyes discerned 
this stultifying anomaly in the case of our de- 
mocracy sixty years ago, in the outrageous dis- 
crimination which the bail system makes against 
the poor man. He is locked up until trial in 
default thereof, while for an ordinary crime a 
rich man gives bail, remains free, and if he is in 
danger of conviction, which is rare in the case 
of a person of abundant cash who is willing to 
spend it, he only has to jump his bail, in which 
case his offense is squared by a fine. Our entire 
legal system is grossly unrepublican and it is no 
wonder that poor men regard it as organized in- 
justice. The peace and progress of society must 
ultimately compel its entire reorganization from 
bottom to top, because its methods and mechan- 
ism are antiquated, effete and unrighteous, and 
they stand to-day utterly discredited by the 



452 THE COMING CLIMAX 

body of our people, who hate but do not respect 
them. 

The tendency of our laws to protect property 
and neglect men has received sinister emphasis 
since the modern corporation rose to its present 
stupendous wealth and power. And yet it was 
against the possible piling-up of riches in the 
hands of individuals, by successive transmission 
of them unimpaired from father to son, that our 
nation-builders framed their wholesome statutes 
against primogeniture and long entails, for they 
knew that the best security of democratic gov- 
ernment was in the wide diffusion of wealth 
among the whole body of the people. 

Daniel Webster pointed out the prodigious 
influence upon social and political affairs of laws 
regulating the tenure and inheritance of prop- 
erty. In his ever-famous Plymouth Rock ora- 
tion delivered December 22nd, 1820, Mr. Web- 
ster said: "The character of the political insti- 
tutions of New England was determined by the 
fundamental laws respecting property." He 
enumerated the abolition of the right of primo- 
geniture, the curtailment of entails, long trusts 
and other processes for fettering and tying up 
lands. The consequence of all these causes, he 



THE COMING CLIMAX 453 

said, had been a great subdivision of the soil 
and a great equality of condition, the true basis 
most certainly of a popular government. He 
further remarked, "A free government cannot 
long endure where the tendency of laws is to 
concentrate the wealth of the country in the 
hands of the few and to render the masses poor 
and dependent." 

De Tocqueville in his "Democracy in America" 
says: "But the law of inheritance was the last 
step to equality. I am surprised that ancient 
and modern jurists have not attributed to this 
law a greater effect on human affairs. Through 
their means man acquires a kind of preternatural 
power over the future lot of his fellow-creatures. 
When the legislator has once regulated the law 
of inheritance, he may rest from his labor. The 
machine once put in motion will go on for ages 
and advance as if self-guided toward a point indi- 
cated beforehand. When framed in a particu- 
lar manner, this law unites, draws together and 
vests property and power in a few hands; it 
causes an aristocracy, so to speak, to spring out 
of the ground." 

Forty years ago Horace Mann, in a speech be- 
fore the Boston Library Association, said: "The 



454 THE COMING CLIMAX 

feudalism of capital is not a whit less formida- 
ble than the feudalism of force. The millionaire 
of to-day is as dangerous to society as were the 
baronial lords of the middle ages. I may as 
well be dependent for my head as for my bread. 
The time is sure to come when men will look 
back upon the prerogatives of capital with as 
just and severe condemnation as we now look 
back on the predatory chieftains of the dark 
ages." 

And this was Abraham Lincoln s awful 
prophecy — "I see in the near future a crisis 
arising which unnerves me and causes me to 
tremble for the safety of my country. As a re- 
sult of the war, corporations have been en- 
throned, and an era of corruption in high places 
will follow, and the money power of the country 
will endeavor to prolong its reign by working 
upon the prejudices of the people, until all the 
wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the 
republic destroyed. I feel at this time more 
anxiety for the safety of my country than ever 
before. God grant that my fears may prove 
groundless." 

In the coming reformation of the American 
republic, men must be put forever and eternally 



THE COMING CLIMAX 455 

above property. The founders of the nation 
considered that vast accumulations of property 
under one control were hostile to the well-being 
of the body of a people who remained poor. 
To the extent of their outlook into the future 
they guarded against the piling up of great fort- 
unes because they deemed them inimical to the 
republic. That high and justifying example the 
great plain people of America must now follow 
if they would save the masses of the nation from 
poverty with all its attendant degrading condi- 
tions. After the experience of one hundred 
years, which is but a short time to test the effi- 
ciency of the laws against primogeniture and 
long entails, we see that they are practically 
failures. The Astor and Vanderbilt fortunes 
prove this. It has already become traditional 
in those families to leave the bulk of the wealth 
to one son, while the others are portioned off 
with millions apiece which form the nuclei of 
new gigantic fortunes. We have no laws that 
can touch this disposition of property. This 
plan of portioning out great estates bids fair to 
become a settled custom, and will eventually 
build up a powerful plutocratic caste. The evils 
which threaten the masses of the republic from 



456 THE COMING CLIMAX 

this source, however, are trifling ana inconsider- 
able when compared with the titanic oppression 
and spoliation which can come to the country 
through the combinations of corporate wealth. 
We have now the spectacle of single trusts and 
railway systems, with an aggregate wealth of 
over a thousand million dollars apiece, and the 
tendency is resistlessly toward larger accumu- 
lations and greater concentrations of capital. 

Each one of these is under the control of a 
single master mind. The death of the tempo- 
rary despot does not disperse the combination, 
for his successor immediately claps on the crown 
of sovereignty, and the capitalistic juggernaut 
goes on without halt. It is an emphasized case 
of "The King is dead, long live the King," for 
dynastic families may die out, but corporations 
are immortal. 

The fathers of the republic feared that great 
fortunes would be hostile to popular prosperity 
and the democratic idea. We know the fact by 
overwhelming demonstration, and the time has 
now come when the American people must either 
rise up and crush them, or submit to be crushed 
by them. These aggregations of corporate 
wealth are the foes of republican institutions, 



THB COMING CLIMAX 457 

and the producing masses must fight them to the 
death in self-preservation, for they are the 
deadly enemies of a lowly humanity that aspires 
after a nobler and fairer life. 

What are the weapons of war for the great 
plain people in this conflict ? Simply the demo- 
cratic idea made fully manifest in government. 
That is to say, make this nation a government 
that is truly of the people, by the people and for 
the people. That condition has never been ex- 
istent in our republic. Fourth of July elocution- 
ists have made seductive oration, that this was 
indeed the land of liberty and equality, but hear- 
ers and eulogists alike knew that the affirmation 
was a lie. Patriotic panegyrists have addressed 
glowing apostrophes to the starry flag of the free, 
when between their periods the scourged slave 
could be heard shrieking under the lash. 

No sooner had the war killed off the slaveoc- 
racy, than a new and far more malignant enemy 
of popular government rose to power in the re- 
public: it was the plutocracy, that now reigns 
triumphant all throughout the land. It has 
made successful demonstration that massed mill- 
ions of money can defeat the will and take away 
the rights of massed millions of men. 



458 THE COMING CLIMAX 

The American plutocracy has selected the bat- 
tle-ground on which the American producers 
must make their fight for life. The plutocrats 
by their practice declare that it is the privilege 
of wealth to oppress and rob to the extent of its 
capacity. On this their chosen field, the great 
plain people of America must meet them, and 
there the destiny of the democratic idea in hu- 
man government will be determined for a thou- 
sand years to come. There it will either find its 
overwhelming Waterloo, or else gain a victori- 
ous Marathon that shall shine out for ages as 
the decisive battle that brought in a new cycle 
of liberty and justice for all humanity. Aye, it 
shall be far more than this. It shall be that 
plain of Armageddon dimly seen by ancient seers, 
where the brute nature and immortal soul of 
man close in a final contest, which shall herald 
the dawning of the era of love and tenderness 
when nations shall know the fatherhood of God 
and live the brotherhood of man. This was the 
prayer made by Him of many sorrows when dy- 
ing on Calvary's cross, and at last it shall come 
true, for the everlasting God hath so ordained it. 

The total value of all the property in the 



THE COMING CLIMAX 459 

United States is about sixty billions of dollars. 
It is estimated that the capitalistic class has 
grasped forty billions of this wealth by the dead 
hands of their stocks, bonds and mortgages. 
After a few more years of scheming, bonding 
and stock-watering by these financial necroman- 
cers the entire property of the country will be 
represented in paper securities on which divi- 
dends must be paid to the drone capitalists from 
the wealth created by the workers. The pro- 
ducer, the man who toils with his hands, pays for 
everything, for without his toil stocks, bonds, 
railways, mines and factories become valueless, 
and gold, silver and paper promises-to-pay are 
mere dross, because there is nothing for them 
to buy, unless labor does its task beforehand. 
It is now axiomatically manifest that this 
country will soon be in a condition where its 
entire wealth is represented by interest-bearing 
securities, that can be locked up in safety de- 
posit vaults by their plutocratic owners. When 
this time comes, and it is almost at hand, the 
whole body of the toiling producers will be the 
mere serfs of capitalistic drones. The wages al- 
lowed them will only be sufficient to enable 
them to do their tasks, and reproduce them- 



460 THE COMING CLIMAX 

selves, while the great bulk of the wealth cre- 
ated by their hands will go to swell the enor- 
mous hoards of the already monstrously rich. 
A system under which this devastation of hu- 
manity can go on, as it is going to-day, is not 
civilized, nor semi-civilized, nor barbaric, nor 
savage; it is simply infernal, and unless extir- 
pated root and branch will surely bring the na- 
tion that tolerates it to merited destruction. 

It will be put away and that ere many years. 
If man does not do it of his own volition, God 
will do it and in the same manner that He put 
away the crime of slavery. The millionaire, by 
grace of craft and finesse, in manipulating stocks, 
bonds and mortgages, is nothing but a hideous 
survival of the feudal baron and American slave- 
driver, and he must go, or liberty, the reign of 
justice, popular prosperity and the American 
republic will go. Let us put him away in peace 
and thus save civilization from a terrible shock. 

The task will be a mighty effort of self-preser- 
vation on the part of a whole people, and the 
foe to be overthrown is the allied money kings 
of Europe and America. It is declared by those 
who know it to be the truth, that the American 
people are now the special objects of spoliation, 



THE COMING CLIMAX 461 

on the part of the organized plutocrats of the 
world. It is said that the great bankers and 
capitalists, on both sides of the Atlantic, have 
formed a secret association. They work to- 
gether according to a pre-arranged plan, and 
correspond in cipher. It is affirmed that each 
American metropolis is under the special super- 
vision of councils of ten. These secret dictators 
control the press, the judges and the elected 
officials, and direct public opinion. The end and 
aim of this international league of plutocrats is 
to make the producers of this nation the indus- 
trial slaves of interest-bearing securities, the 
money power and corporate wealth. 

The first move in the campaign of the great 
plain people for the overthrow of this desolating 
tyranny, must be the establishment of a system 
of Governmental banking. The reason and intui- 
tions of the producing masses of America are 
right in deciding that the financial question is of 
primary moment to them, and hence the people's 
party of America is now much concerned over 
systems of banking. 

Before considering new methods of popular 
banking, let us briefly glance at the existing pri- 
vate system. By the exigencies of the war, the 



462 THE COMING CLIMAX 

Government was compelled to issue paper money 
and put its fiat stamp on it. Before the rebell- 
ion, all paper money was issued by private 
banks, so that when a bank failed its bills became 
worthless. It was an immense step ahead when 
the United States stood behind the paper issue 
and guaranteed that the dollar mark was good 
so long as the Government stood. By reason of 
the bond-deposits demanded from the so-called 
national banks, the government became warrant 
for their paper issue. So far so good — but our 
banking and financial system still remained a 
relic of barbarism, and a standing reproach to 
our boasted civilization. 

Let us put it to the test: 

A man of fifty years of age has $5,000 cash in 
hand that is the result of the hard toil and care- 
ful saving of half a lifetime. He does not wish 
to invest this money, as he may desire to use it 
any day. Where shall he put it in order to have 
it safe against the time he requires it ? He goes 
forth and makes search for a place of deposit 
that is absolutely secure, and lo, he finds it not! 
Are banks safe ? Ask the depositors of the Key- 
stone, Maverick, and scores of other "sound" 
banks that have failed in the last year. There 



THE COMING CLIMAX 463 

is not a bank in the United States that gives 
absolute security to deposits. All that can be 
said of those in highest repute is, that they are 
safer than some other banks; but none of them 
are safe, and all are liable to break and lose the 
depositors' money. Safety-deposit vaults are 
not safe beyond a peradventure, because they 
might be blown up and robbed. If the man 
with $5,000 buries the money in his cellar, it is 
not safe, for the house might burn down or 
some one might know it was there and dig it up. 
So all he can do in order to be secure, is to buy 
land with it, or loan it on real estate and let 
some other person take the chance of losing it. 

The banks of the country were never so uni- 
versally suspected as to-day, and this fact ac- 
counts for the rapid increase of safety-deposit 
vaults in all our great cities. The gravest 
calamity in connection with our crude and sense- 
less banking system is, that it does not furnish 
the necessary mechanism to keep the money of 
the country in circulation. 

It is estimated that we have about two bill- 
ions of gold, silver and paper money in the 
United States, but it would be difficult to prove 
that $300,000,000 of that amount is actually 



464 THE COMING CLIMAX 

available at any one time. The treasury and 
sub-treasuries of the Government habitually 
keep hundreds of millions stored away, where it 
is of no more use to the people than if it were 
on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The great 
private banks do the same thing as far as they 
are able, because bankers find their profit in 
making money scarce, and then three or four 
million citizens will constantly keep from $25 to 
$2,500 apiece out of circulation because they 
distrust banks. In Chicago, two small private 
banks failed in the fall of 1890. Within a few 
days thereafter, a total of $13,000,000 in depos- 
its were withdrawn from the national banks and 
hidden in safety-deposit vaults. 

The deficiencies in our present banking sys- 
tem are so monumentally obvious that their ex- 
istence amounts to an indictment of imbecility 
against our whole people. Our greenback 
friends, who are anxious for a large increase in 
the volume of currency, would find that an addi- 
tion of three billion dollars would be only a 
temporary relief, under the present financial sys- 
tem, for the existent withdrawing forces would 
soon hide it away. Nothing but Governmental 
banking will keep our volume of currency so 
that we can know where to find it. 



THE COMING CLIMAX 465 

Prof. Thomas E. Hill, of Prospect Park, 111., 
the author, publicist and philanthropist, has out- 
lined a plan of Governmental banking which 
would seem to meet our present needs effect- 
ively. It is a system which calls for from three 
to five thousand Government banks, or enough 
to suffice amply for the business-needs of the 
entire country. It makes every one of the 
65,000 postoffices a postal savings-bank for the 
receipt of money for transmission to the nearest 
Government bank. These Government banks 
receive money on deposit, guarantee its absolute 
security, and give three per cent interest on long- 
time deposits. They loan money to farmers, 
clerks, workingmen, and business men, in town 
and country alike, at four per cent per annum 
on sufficient security. 

The Hill Banking System is conservative, and 
gives no shock to legitimate business. It does 
not violently change our present system to the 
injury of frugal people who have saved up a lit- 
tle money under existing conditions. Its adop- 
tion would not bring hardship and loss to good 
people. 

It will bring every dollar now hidden away 
into circulation and keep it there. It will ena- 
30 



466 THE COMING CLIMAX 

ble us to increase the circulating medium with 
wise certainty so that while a universal prosper- 
ity will be assured, there will be no undue infla- 
tion of values. It will give solidity and stability 
to the commercial world; panics and crashes 
brought on by speculation will be unknown. It 
will increase the value of every bushel of wheat, 
every acre of farming land, and every day's work, 
whether done in the field, shop, mine, or on 
railway. Under it every farmer can refund his 
mortgage, at a low rate of interest, have the 
Government for a kindly creditor, and be happy 
in the conviction that he will soon free himself 
from all debt and never lose his home. The 
oppressed city people who now have to pay five 
per cent a month on their chattel mortgages, 
can also secure loans at four per cent per annum. 
The workingman, whether artisan or clerk, can 
raise a loan on his lot and build a home for his 
family. 

Mr. Hill's system involves no financial revolu- 
tion. There is no tearing down the old house 
and living out doors until a better one is built. 
The man does not have to stand in his shirt- 
sleeves for an instant, while replacing the worn- 
out coat with a better one, for in this case the 



THE COMING CLIMAX 467 

new garment is put on, and the old one just 
naturally drops off. The sensitive nervous sys- 
tem of the business world would be informed of 
the change merely by feeling a new life and 
vigor go pulsing through the whole organism. 
The general adoption of the Hill Banking Sys- 
tem would be merely a wise and urgently de- 
manded extension of governmental functions 
that are already in existence. Given the requi- 
site legislation, and the plan could be working 
out its beneficent results in every part of the 
United States in one month's time. 

Mr. Hill's banking system would not disturb 
the present status of gold and silver in our mon- 
etary affairs, and thus this grand reform would 
involve no shock to our financial relations with 
foreign countries. 

The subjoined resolution has been suggested 
as a one-plank platform for the People's Party 
of America in its campaign of 1892: 

Whereas: — The business interests of the people 
of the United States in country and city are at 
the mercy of a system of private banking that is 
a relic of the dark ages. 

It places the currency of the country under the 
control of a knot of conspirators, who use their 
power to enrich themselves at the expense of the 
producers. 



468 THE COMING CLIMAX 

It offers no security to honest depositors, and 
occasions enormous losses to the people through 
bank failures. 

It enables tricksters who speculate in food- 
products and the control of the people's highways 
to lock up money, depress prices and bring on 
panics. 

It is the fruitful mother of usury and enables 
the drones of the land to devour the workers. 

And whereas: — An equitable system of gov- 
ernment banking, of national banks for the nation 
and not for personal profit, will strike at the 
tap-root of these abuses. 

It will do away with private bankers, mortgage 
companies and professional Shylocks. 

It will make practical a postal-savings system 
for the benefit of those whose scanty savings are 
now too often the prey of confidence men. 

It will thus bring all hidden hoards of money 
into circulation, and by so doing increase sixfold 
the efficient volume of currency. 

It will give a multitude of small business men, 
now the victims of chattel-mortgage robbers, 
the same banking facilities that are enjoyed by 
the rich. 

It will furnish the capital at a low rate for any 
county, township or responsible association of 
farmers to build warehouses for the storage of non- 
perishable farm products, which products would 
then constitute a safe and legitimate security for 
loans. 

It will return the profits of banking to the treas- 
ury of the nation, there to help defray the legit- 
imate expenses of government and diminish the 
burden of taxation on the people. 

Therefore be it resolved: — That the People's 



THE COMING CLIMAX 469 

Party of America pledge itself to the People's 
Banking System, which shall truly be of the peo- 
ple, by the people and for the people. 

To that end we demand the establishment of 
government banks, to be located at such places 
and in such number as shall amply meet the fi- 
nancial and commercial needs of the people; every 
postmaster to be a receiving agent; the govern- 
ment to guarantee the absolute safety of all de- 
posits, and to pay a low rate of interest on time 
deposits; loans to be made at the lowest practica- 
ble rate of interest on all kinds of real and per- 
sonal property in city and country to the amount 
of 50 per cent of actual value. 

This platform embodies the essence of the re- 
lief intended by the sub-treasury plan of Dr. 
C. W. Macune of the National Farmers' Alli- 
ance. 

Justice and sound political economy demand 
that the Government own and run all the rail- 
ways of the country. Under corporate owner- 
ship they are inimical to public morals, be- 
cause their methods include wholesale corrup- 
tion of the official servants of the people. They 
are dangerous to the peace of the nation from 
the liability of strikes on the part of a half-mill- 
ion bold and resolute employees. They rob the 
business men and farmers of the country through 
unjust charges for carriage of persons and com- 
modities. • , 



470 THE COMING CLIMAX 

They should be bought in by the Government 
at their actual value, but if they were seized for 
the general good, by the right of eminent do- 
main, and not a cent given for them, it would 
be a trifling hardship when compared with what 
the Government does by the citizens in time of 
war. It drafts and puts tjiem in the front of 
battle for the safety of the republic. Surely 
railroad bonds are not more sacred than the 
lives of men. 

We must have a system of land-taxation that 
is so onerous against all English lords, railway 
grants, alien owners, foreign and domestic syn- 
dicates and speculators, that they will promptly 
drop the hundreds of millions of acres, which 
they are now holding idle and profitless to man- 
kind. The usufruct of God's fertile soil of right 
belongs to the men who are willing to make it 
produce by the labor of their hands. 

Every acre of coal and oil land in America 
should revert to the several states and be worked 
impartially for the common good of the whole 
people. It is monstrous that these gifts of the 
Deity to all his children should be used merely 
to glut the greed of a few of them. 

The time has come to this republic when its 



THE COMING CLIMAX 471 

future must be dominated by an intelligent plan 
that is in accord with the eternal moralities. 
The nation has passed its childhood and 
should take on the sober thoughtfulness that be- 
longs to maturity. We have listened all too 
long to the devil-logic of materialistic philoso- 
phers which tells us that the ideal state for col- 
lective humanity is where the individual follows 
the law of personal selfishness, and that through 
it, a beautiful, harmonious and progressive order 
of society will be unconsciously evolved, with- 
out any enlightened plan or wise directive intel- 
ligence. We have now in the case of this re- 
public a stupendous object-lesson which shows 
the result of running a nation according to the 
gospel of atheism, and it has brought us to the 
edge of the bottomless pit, where nothing can 
save our civilization from extinction except a 
wide-spread application of the religion of Jesus 
Christ. Justice, charity and brotherly love must 
make the living soul of our Government. To- 
day it is but a man-made Frankenstein of a na- 
tion, and it cannot last unless we allow the ever- 
willing God to breathe something of his own 
spirit into it, for then only will it truly live. 
We have denied an imploring Deity and hence 
our present danger. 



472 THE COMING CLIMAX 

Great cities are ulcers on the body of organ- 
ized society, and ultimately bring it to death. 
They are not the legitimate products of civiliza- 
tion, for the ruins of many a vast metropolis, 
that antedates human history, now lie buried 
in the sands of oriental deserts. Modern inven- 
tion has put it in the power of the American peo- 
ple to disperse all the revolting evils that go 
with those vast aggregations of human beings, 
and yet retain every one of their advantages. 

Take Chicago, for example, with the prairies 
stretching away on three sides of it. The mu- 
nicipality could construct and own a scientific 
system of rapid transit, by steam and electric 
surface and elevated railways, that would cover 
the country within thirty miles of the city with 
their harmonious ramifications and connections. 
This system could be constructed with reference 
to a time when the section in question would 
contain a population twice as large as that 
which now inhabits London. A person should 
be able to go to any point within that area for 
one fare of five cents, regardless of number of 
transfers. 

A city that would stand solid through the 
ages must make the conservation and progress 



THE COMING CLIMAX 473 

of its producers a first care. All laws should be 
built to that end. Supplement this scientific 
plan of rapid transit with the People's Banking 
System, and a reform in taxation and land-tenure 
that would nurture the mechanic and devastate 
the big speculator; and Chicago, fifty years 
hence, would contain millions of workingmen's 
homes each owned by its occupant. 

Under this new condition, the cities would be 
composed of a congeries of hundreds of small 
trade centers. The noisome dives and dens, 
where poverty and crime now swelter and breed 
corruption, would be gone, while all the halls, 
libraries and places of great public assembly 
would be within thirty minutes of the most dis- 
tant resident. This would be exchanging growth 
without intelligent plan for one laid on enlight- 
ened, scientific and humane lines. 

Our voting- system needs radical reformation. 
The Australian ballot merely extirpates surface 
evils. We need improvements that will allow 
the citizen to do his duty with greater ease, 
simplicity and effectiveness. Changes must be 
made so that he neither can nor will desire to 
shirk his obligations to society. Voting citizens 
can be blocked off into hundreds according to 



474 THE COMING CLIMAX 

locality, each hundred having a good citizen who 
acts as its curator. At election, this official 
shall have five days in which to visit his quota 
of voters. He takes officially designated envel- 
opes and ballots. The voter makes a selection of 
his chosen ticket from the entire list, marks 
it and returns the same to the specially protected 
envelope, on the outside of which he signs his 
name. The judges of election open the polls by 
comparing signatures on envelopes with signa- 
tures in the official register. The outer envel- 
ope is then opened and the smaller inner envel- 
ope, that contains the ballot, is thrown into the 
receptacle for the votes of the entire district. 
These are carefully mixed before being opened, 
so that the secrecy of the ballot is preserved. 

Under this entirely feasible plan, the citizens 
could declare their will on important national, 
state or municipal questions, once every two 
weeks, if need be, and with no more trouble 
than is required to write a short business note. 

The details of this general plan of voting re- 
form are susceptible of perfect elaboration. 

The citizens of this republic have gotten out 
of the habit of helping to govern it, hence the 
peril we are now in. Every person who objects 



THE COMING CLIMAX 475 

to the increase of officials that will come in with 
government ownership of railways, banks, and 
other public utilities, is a monarchist, whether 
he knows it or not. He does not believe that a 
whole people can be safely trusted to govern 
themselves, and this has always been the claim 
by which the autocrat has justified his despot- 
ism. The man who makes that declaration 
scoffs at the democratic idea; he slanders the 
morality and intelligence of the entire body of 
our citizens, and his proper home is Russia, for 
his logic has no stopping-place this side of an 
absolute despotism. 

The new order of society which we must have, 
if we are to live, shall give tender consideration 
to grown persons of arrested intellectual devel- 
opment, who are as incapable of intelligent self- 
direction as so many children. Under the pres- 
ent atheistic social order they go through life 
utterly uncared for by society, until they are 
flung into jails as criminals, or find a refuge in 
hospitals and almshouses as paupers. The treat- 
ment they receive in those retreats, all neglected 
by the Christian well-to-do, makes a belief in a 
future hell for some persons exceedingly easy. 
The horrors and abuses that are heaped on these 



476 THE COMING CLIMAX 

so-called wards of society, in public institutions, 
brands our people as a race of moral savages, 
and some good persons think that it is a token 
that God's day of grace for our civilization is 
over, and that the fate of the sin-cursed cities 
which are now buried under the waters of the 
Dead Sea will soon be upon us. An all-pervad- 
ing selfishness is our national crime, and this 
offense on the part of an enlightened and Chris- 
tianized people, who know the better way but 
go not in it, is the crime of crimes before God. 
Let us remember that all the world's past has 
been made dark and tragic by a greed that came 
out of the animal nature of man. This univer- 
sal greed has furnished a foul but fertile soil for 
the growth of innumerable evils. All the injus- 
tice and cruelty of earth have rootage therein 
and draw hideous life and malign strength there- 
from. 

Here, also, rankly flourishes the upas verdure 
of personal interests and selfish policies, and 
when God's shining evangels appear on earth 
preaching of moral progress, the rights of man 
and heaven's higher law, whole communities 
rush for the dense jungle where it is always 
night, and, breathing in the narcotized air, lie 



THE COMING CLIMAX 477 

down sightless and with ears fast locked, feebly 
muttering, "We see naught — we hear naught." 

Again and again sound forth the celestial trum- 
pets: "Awake, awake! O, all ye people, and 
work the will of God for man." But the selfish 
sluggards heed not and slumber on. 

Then leap into life dread Avatars with flaming 
torch and flashing blade. Awful incarnations of 
that constructive energy which first uses the 
plowshare of destruction in leveling, rending 
and upturning for another planting, sweep over 
the earth and the old things are not. Genera- 
tions of men pass away like sunset-shadows. 
Fruitful fields are given over to graves. Great 
cities lie in ruins and mighty nations vanish for- 
ever in the smoke of battle. Then in the fresh- 
ness and silence of a new morning the Hus- 
bandman of a diviner civilization goeth forth 
and soweth his seed. 

Thus hath it ever been, thus must it ever be, 
when men decline the task set by the Almighty, 
and compel God to do all the work himself; for 
lo, he hath decreed that ever on and on through 
the ages must go the evolutionary uplift, from 
monad to man, from man to the archangel. 

Must humanity be always born into higher 



478 THE COMING CLIMAX 

cycles of existence through terror, blood and 
death? Yes, so long as man is dominated by 
the selfish physical, and refuses to co-operate 
with the higher powers in working out his own 
salvation. But when his immortal spirit rises 
triumphant over the mortal flesh, and, stretch- 
ing willing hands toward high heaven, asks for 
its toil, then will the burden be easy, and all the 
upward pathway filled with light. To say other- 
wise is to make scoff at the Divine benevolence 
which rules the universe. 



THE END 



"WHEN THE TOWERS FALL" 

They were built by the Lords of Wrong, 
The gray old kings of the world, 

Long ago; 
Frowning they stood, and strong, 
And the sea-waves foamed and curled 

Down below. 

The sea-waves moaned and wept, 
And plucked with wild, vain hands 

At the shore; 
The sea-winds wailed and swept 
Over bitter, desolate lands 

Evermore. 

"They shall stand for endless years! " 
Moaned a weary multitude 

In their pain; 
"The mortar tempered with tears, 
And the clay that was kneaded with blood 

Of men slain." 

"They shall stand for aye, and shine!" 
Cried the foolish ones and strong, 
479 



480 WHEN THE TOWERS FALL 

In their pride; 
"Landmarks of right divine, 
Since they have stood so long 

Undefied." 

Lo! the years haste on, and the days, 
And the fruit still springs from the seed, 

Good or ill, 
And the stars go on in their ways, 
And the holy laws decreed 

Work their will. 

They shall bring the morning round, 
When the light strikes dim and cold, 

And the true 
Shall burn up the false, and the ground 
Shudder with longing to hold 

All things new. 

And, lo! the children of men 
Shall know of the hand of God 

Ruling all. 
The sun shall be sackcloth then, 
And the moon be dark with blood, 

When they fall. 

Alice Werner. 




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